[CQ-Contest] CQ-Contest] Busted Reversed Beacon Network spots

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

I'm not at all sure that the RBN is responsible for all or even a majority
of the busted spots. RBN spots seem quite clean with the filter settings
mentioned elsewhere.  It appears that a bad *manual* spot will persist for
all kinds of reasons, including someone's logging program and its option
settings.  As a running station you are subject to whatever settings all
the calling stations have in their station software.

After experiencing quite some number of flood-of-dupes-from-bad-spot
episodes at NY4A over the years, the best thing still seems to be run your
keying speed up to 35 wpm, work them all as quickly as possible and instead
of sending TU, 73 or dit-dit to confirm their exchange, send your call plus
sped-up TEST as confirmation. In my case that would be NY4A at 35 wpm and
TEST at 40 or 45 WPM.

This tactic has the advantage of putting a fast <your call>+TEST into the
tiny clear space before the braying resumes, and may actually get some to
associate your call with the signal on frequency, while it keeps feeding
skimmers with the right call.

As best as I can tell, doing anything else makes it worse, killing even
more of your time.  I once sent my call at 15 wpm after each Q to try and
get some to copy my call and go away, but all that seemed to do was stretch
out the pain.  They clearly had no intention of copying my call, only
listening for theirs to get in their exchange. They probably thought I was
braying my call at the [non-existent] spot as well.

73, Guy

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 7:49 AM, brian coyne <g4odv at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>
> Mid Sunday evening I too was victim of a bad 'spot'.
>
> Because
>  it was so hard to get runs going this weekend it was more obvious than
> usual whenever a spot had been posted somewhere. I work 'unassisted' so
> wouldn't know the origin of the 'spot' but on that occasion there was a
> sudden flurry of big guns whom I had already worked.
>
> My policy
> is to work dupes, after all it could have been my own error that caused
> the first bust, and further, it is quicker overall to work them than
> argue the toss. The callers really have no excuse though because I
> identify after just about every qso, especially in a slow event as we
> had this weekend.
>
> After several of these dupes though I did call a
>  halt and state qso b4, until then dupes had been well below 1% and this
>  was getting silly. I do wonder how long those spots are stored in
> different places as around 30 minutes later I had a weak usa stn who
> obviously wasn't hearing me too well ask me to confirm my call was C4G
> which I presume was the bad spot.,
>
> 73  Brian   C4Z / 5B4AIZ
>
>
>