[CQ-Contest] Little Gun Dilemma: Callsign not acknowledged

[Leigh S. Jones, KR6X]

One could take a more pragmatic view than Clive does below.  A 
certain degree of pragmatism is appropriate in contests.

It's like this: no matter how careful you are, in the course of a 48 
hour contest there is a chance that you will make a mistake and 
log something wrong, and the guy on the other end takes the 
same chance.

Sitting in a pile-up that you can no longer break through on and
trying to get the other guy to send your callsign again can be an
annoying waste of time.  Annoying to him, and annoying to the
rest of the guys in the pile-up.  You have to use your best 
judgement in deciding whether to do that, based on the degree
of reality of the assumption that the other guy has your call wrong.

Here's an example (must be viewed in constant
pitch font such as courrier new):

f time------>
r 
e zd6x            ...r6x 5nnnnn      kr6x r zd6x
q      pileup garbage
|      kr6x kr6x               599ca kr6x
|                       
v

In the example, zd6x hears my call correctly, and I am unsure he's 
got it right.  I repeat my callsign while he sends mine again.  He's
gone way out of his way to send my callsign, but I'm still not sure
because we transmitted on top of each other.

Ignoring for the moment that my own signal has never been big
enough to break through a pileup to Africa, I'd have to have some
more knowledge to decide whether or not there's any reason to 
disbelieve that the QSO was made between kr6x and zd6x before
I decided whether to log this contact.  For instance, If I'd been 
hearing 8r6x, nr6x, and nf6x in the pileup while I was calling this 
guy, maybe it would have been pretty stupid for me to send a
signal report in the first place.

But if all of the pieces fall into place, there's no reason to delete
this contact just because I'm positive he never sent my complete
callsign.  Sometimes you can be pretty sure (though rarely 
rightfully so) that the other guy was actually talking to you.  It helps
to be loud.  You can get away with this a lot when you're pretty 
darned loud.  Darn it (cleaned up version).

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Clive Whelan" <clive at gw3njw.fsworld.co.uk>
To: <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2002 11:33
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Little Gun Dilemma: Callsign not acknowledged


> 
> NG3K wrote
> 
> 
> > At step 4, my personal preference is:
> > 
> > 4  me: big0gun r ng3k 599 md
> >
> 
> 
> 
> I think you * should*, and I always *do* send
> 
> 4. de ng3k ng3k tu 599 md  ( I do think the de is important as a 
> delimiter here)
> 
> 
> If big0gun sends anything else but ng3k tu......., don't log 
> him, it's his own fault and he deserves a NIL.
> 
> 
> Thanks for the Q from GW7X ( not a big gun!), you were not 
> strong, but quite readable.
> 
> 
> 73
> 
> 
> Clive
> GW3NJW
> gw3njw at gw7x.org
> Contest Cambria-http://www.gw7x.org
> 
> 
> --
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> 


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