[SEDXC] I've been asked "What's a SLIM"

[Mike, ND4V]

I reported in the bulletin that the recent JA on six was a "slim"....
meaning a pirate. The term was unfamiliar to at least one of our readers.
   
I think I caught it from Bill Strickland ex WA4FVT now K4DX, but lawdy,
lawdy,  Strick has his own vocabulary for the wireless (and most everything
else) 
 ...... so having been reeled in once today by the Hellman Mayonaise/Titanic
disaster of epic proportions, (ask Chaz)
I decided I better google Slim and Pirate. 
 
I enjoyed reading what I found and pass it along for grins.   
 
 The AC6V website has this to say .......
 
 
Slim - Someone pretending to be a DX station, usually rare, that is supposed
to be on the air.  For example, someone in southern Argentina pretending to
be Heard Island, VK0IR

Pirate - Someone using an existing callsign and operating on the air, e.g.
claiming to be WA6YOO/4 on an North Carolina island group.  What would
happen is that I would suddenly be surprised by receiving a number of QSL
cards and wonder "What Happened?"

Bootlegger - Someone, usually not a Ham but a wannabe, making up a callsign,
one usually not in the callbook, and getting on the air. Sometimes it is
someone who already bought a radio, took the test and flunked, and then gets
on the air anyway.

These definitions are somewhat flexible because some of their aspects might
be combined.

73 W6YOO 
  _____  


Origin Of Slim From Dave VE2ZP 


The origin of the term SLIM is, I believe, as follows: On a date I cannot
recall in the mid-1960s, an operator showed up on 20m CW, identifying
himself as 8X8A, claiming he was located on "Cray Island," an island that
had just emerged from the ocean floor following a major undersea volcanic
event. The operator said his name was "Slim." Huge pileups endured for a few
days, then "Slim" was exposed as a pirate and he disappeared from the bands.
Ever since, Pirates have been called "Slim." What made "Slim's" claim even
partly credible in the first place was the emergence of Surtsey, an island
near Iceland in (I think) 1964. Surtsey rose from the floor of the Atlantic
as a result of undersea volcanic activity. It was a major news event at the
time. I never heard any of this at the time as I was four years old and not
yet a ham. I read the reports in QSTs and 73 Magazine of the time.

Dave VE2ZP