[TenTec] QRO, QRP and Courtesy

Jack Parker Pparker@greatbasin.net
Fri, 24 Apr 1998 10:02:59 -0700


At 12:08 PM 4/23/98 -0400, you wrote:
>QRO means, "please increase your power."
>
>QRP means, "please decrease your power."
>
>We believe ourselves to be gentlemen (and ladies).
>
>If a person said to me, "I am hard of hearing, could you speak up?"  it
>would be RUDE to continue to whisper.  If I answer your 100 watt CQ with
>5 watts and you give me a 239 report, then I know it is you who are
>straining to make the circuit possible.  If you send QRO and I cannot,
>then courtesy would seem to dictate that I bow out gracefully.
>
>So I call CQ at my typical 50 or 100 watt output and get some
>dyed-in-the-wool QRP operator.  Ask him to QRO and he takes it
>personally -- geez.  My suggestion to such folks is to call your own
>darn CQ.  Take the challenge of QRP yourself, instead of subjecting
>others to it.

                              <snip>


If I may suggest, sir, that if you reply to a station with substandard
signal strength you are implying a willingness to make the effort to
establish communications *under those circumstances*! When the QRP station
called you he/she would have *no way* to ascertain his/her signal strength
at your location and, therefore, *you* must be the judge of whether you are
willing to make the QSO work.

Over the years I have worked tropo-scatter, meteor-scatter and EME...there
are *many* instances when I wished for the luxury of a 239 signal!

72/73,


Jack Parker, W7PW
10-10 #28279; QRP-L #1310; 10GHz VUCC #3 (QRPp); 50MHz WAS (QRP); SMIRK
#3335; ARRL Life Member; Grid Square DM09jo

Immediate past-president: Astronomical Society of Nevada; Member:
Astronomical Society of the Pacific; Member: North Texas Microwave Society;
Associate Member: University of Nevada Radio Club (Radio Pack)

"...the time is fast approaching when freedom, public peace, and social
order itself will not be able to exist without education."

			Alexis de Tocqueville--Democracy in America (1834)

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