[CQ-Contest] SO2R trick

[Kenneth E. Harker]

On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 03:48:41PM -0500, Paul T. Antos wrote:
> Sorry, I didn't get to op SS CW very much  this year ...
> 
> Last year, I recall S&P-ing and coming across a nice strong CQ. I and a few
> others answered, only to hear that station sending another CQ in progress.
> Not that I'd be blowing holes in  the band, but I found it hard to believe
> that it happened , yet again. And, again! It dawned on me that this fella
> might be  SO2R,  and just cycling his CQ message to hold his frequency. I
> sez to myself, now thats a neat trick. Eventually, all four stations
> answering came to the same conclusion and stopped calling.

That's one possible explanation.  There could be others.  

I once operated a contest where one of my radios was mostly deaf on 15 
meters, and almost completely deaf on 10 meters, but perfectly normal on 
the other bands.  The condition of the radio was not immediately apparent 
to me, and I called CQ on 15 meters on several occasions, and even worked
stations, but for all I know I might have been on top of stations I could 
not hear.

Another possibility is that the station is accidentally listening on 
the wrong antenna - like a Beverage or something.  Or they are SO2R
and they think they're listening to the same band that they are transmitting 
on, but they're not.  It can be easy to get confused.

I've operated at a multi-op once where a bad band-switch in an amplifier
made enough contact on transmit to put out power, but not quite enough 
contact on receive to be useful - it took a while to figure out why 
stations sounded so weak.

They could be SO1R but making a run to the restroom and trying to retain
their frequency.

The auto-CQ could be on by accident while they are taking an off time.


There are lots of possibilities.

-- 
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
kenharker at kenharker.com
http://www.kenharker.com/