[RTTY] Upside-down RTTY contest QSO's

[john at kk9a.com]

I noticed this in Roundup last month and now in WPX, except I do not
recall seeing my callsign in their exchange, just their call and a report.
I typically ignore these callers for a while, trying to figure out if they
are calling me or working someone else on frequency. If they are
persistent then I assume that they are calling me and I gave them a report
and they disappear. I am not sure where they are learning these habits,
perhaps good QSO examples should be shown in the rules.

John KK9A


To:	<rtty at contesting.com>
Subject:	Re: [RTTY] Upside-down RTTY contest QSO's
From:	"David G3YYD" <g3yyd at btinternet.com>
Date:	Mon, 13 Feb 2017 17:55:01 -0000


I have a simple solution. If someone does this then I ignore them and carry
on CQ or work another caller. Ok I may lose a Q but it is the only quick way
to educate someone.

I find ignoring them is essential when I am SO2R contesting as I may well be
working 2 pile ups at the same time and need to keep the sequence going.

73 David G3YYD aka M7T in contests.

-----Original Message-----
From: RTTY [mailto:rtty-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Tim Shoppa
Sent: 13 February 2017 17:41
To: rtty at contesting.com
Subject: [RTTY] Upside-down RTTY contest QSO's

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
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