[RTTY] Disturbing Observations

Don Hill AA5AU aa5au at bellsouth.net
Sun Jun 13 22:04:24 PDT 2010


As I tuned around the bands during the last 8 hour segment, I found a USA SO2R station transmitting on both 15 and 20 meters at the
same time in a blatant violation of the rules.  It wasn't a case of someone just making a mistake.  I watched for 15-20 minutes and
simply couldn't believe what I was seeing.  I did let them know he or they were breaking the rules and he/they immediately stopped.
But it made me mad.

Then a little while longer, I saw my call pop up on the bandmap on 20 meters even though I was S&P on that band.  At first I thought
someone made a mistake.  Then I looked at the origin of the spot and realized it was a station I had just worked.  This operator
spotted me on his run frequency.  Although that is not a direct violation of the rules, it still irked me.

I don't know how much of this goes on, but it needs to stop.  The next time I catch someone transmitting two signals at the same
time, I will call them out publicly on it.  I realize there will be instances of stations transmitting at the same time (Multi-2,
Multi-Multi).  But the rules of the DLDC were specific:

4. GENERAL for all categories:

(e) Only one transmitted signal is permitted at any time.

As far as spotting other stations on one's run frequency, it's just the wrong thing to do.  There have been times, such as when I
was on ten meters, when I wanted to spot someone on my run frequency just to let everyone else know the band was open.  But I
didn't.  So don't get caught up in it.

There's been a lot of cheating going on in CW and SSB contests and it's apparent there is cheating on RTTY too.  I'm not sure what
we can do about it other than make it a point to let people know we aren't going to tolerate it.  I'm definitely not going to
tolerate it.

73, Don AA5AU
http://www.aa5au.com
http://www.rttycontesting.com 



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