[RTTY] Dupes how to handle

[Barry Murrell ZS2EZ]

When "trawling" the bands in S&P I generally give a station up to 3 calls to
reply, then move on (unless it is a mult that I need). In the Roundup I
maintained an S&P rate of over 90 an hour for the first hour of the contest,
before starting a run.

This weekend's contest saw several NILs as a result of stations calling over
exchanges (not listening) and despite several calls getting no response.
Sorry, if I don't copy an exchange and give a confirmation this is a NIL - I
do not log incomplete contacts.

Way down on the Southern part of Africa 15m was particularly difficult this
weekend - almost "watery" with deep QSB. At times print was almost
slow-motion. This made copy extremely difficult at times. Surprisingly
though I only had one occasion to use "QSO B4" - when a K7 called me again
some 5 minutes after a clear QSO!!

73 de BARRY MURRELL ZS2EZ
KF26ta - Port Elizabeth, South Africa
Member : SARL - ARRL
website : www.zs2ez.co.za 

-----Original Message-----
From: rtty-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:rtty-bounces at contesting.com] On
Behalf Of Ian White GM3SEK
Sent: 14 February 2012 11:18 AM
To: rtty at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [RTTY] Dupes how to handle

Ed Muns wrote:
>Stack usage is not yet well-defined and probably several approaches can 
>be argued as valid.  Here's mine:
>

Thanks, Ed - that post is yet another 'keeper' from you.


>1.  I am very careful to stack calls in the order that they print in my 
>RTTY decoder window(s).  That is, first one to print goes into the 
>Entry window, next one goes into top of stack, third one goes next in 
>line in the stack, etc.  More and more tail-enders are getting the 
>timing right and I catch all of them as well.

They may be getting their timing right for P49X because you are stacking 
almost constantly, so callers can always hear what they need to do. But 
I fear they are treating P49X as a special case.

As a smaller station that can run steadily but doesn't always have 
multiple callers, I was actually struck by how *few* calling stations 
have got the message to spread their calls over TIME. Far too many were 
calling exactly in sync, and then going silent in sync.

Over the weekend I tried to follow Ed's advice to tough it out, and wait 
in silence for one station to break ranks and call again. But very often 
that didn't work because nobody even tried; or if one station did call 
again, the other(s) immediately fired up as well.

Another point that doesn't apply to the big guns is that smaller running 
stations have to be extremely careful about leaving the frequency silent 
for too long, become someone else will try to steal it!

So "Spread your calls out over TIME" seems to be our next big education 
campaign for the casual callers... and it won't be complete until they 
are doing it for everybody, not just the big guns.


Moving on to W7WHY's point about not calling 'stations who stack', I'd 
have no hard feelings about that... but please try at least once!

Stacking worked much better for me when configured for 'first in, first 
out' - in other words the strongest, slickest, smartest caller always 
needs to be worked first because those stations are also the least 
likely to wait.


As for working dupes, my policy is:

1. The first time they call as a dupe, call CQ again. Given a second 
chance to print my callsign correctly, many duplicate callers disappear.

2. If they still call again, work them. They probably have a good 
reason, so don't ask questions - just do it.

3. If a station calls yet again, with already two good QSOs in my log, 
then call CQ right in their face.

4. If they still persist and are jamming out other callers, then engage 
Ctrl-K and send them a Personalized Greeting Message. (Usually we only 
reach this stage on day 2, when beaming towards countries that are famed 
for enjoying a looong and well lubricated Sunday lunch.)


-- 

73 from Ian GM3SEK
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek
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