[RTTY] Upside-down RTTY contest QSO's

[Tim Shoppa]

I had maybe 20-30 callers this weekend (out of 1600+ Q's) who had what I
call "upside down" exchanges.

I call: CQ CQ TEST N3QE N3QE CQ

These upside down guys come back to my CQ with: N3QE DE F1AKE 599 014 014
014

Yes, that's right, he doesn't just send his call, he sends his exchange in
reply to my CQ.

I then reply with my usual macro: F1AKE 599 1245 1245 F1AKE

Then, well, things kinda fall apart. Sometimes the guy just disappears,
after all he did get both sides of the exchange. Other times he comes back
with: N3QE TU DE F1AKE SK

Then anyone listening in is confused. Does N3QE own the run frequency or
F1AKE? It's not at all obvious.

I first encountered this unusual upside-down style when I was at the
"Digital modes" Field Day desk a few years ago.  On field day, maybe 30% of
RTTY Q's and more than half of the PSK31 QSO's had this upside-down style.
I would guess that there's some common digital-mode software package that
suggests this as the default S&P exchange macro, or maybe the
software-package doesn't even differentiate between RUN and S&P Macros.

Is there any hope of educating these guys? They seem to be increasingly
prevalent in contests. I wanted to start lecturing these guys over RTTY as
to what they're doing wrong but didn't want to waste the time, and maybe
they're using some dumb software that has to work this way or something.

I feel that very related, I would be running a frequency, working a guy,
not even close to done working him, and some local guys who I know are PSK
enthusiasts would show up on the frequency and call the guy with an
exchange, acting like they had NO IDEA what phase the QSO or who was
running the frequency.

Tim N3QE