Topband: Tailending

[Larry Higgins]

A few weeks after I arrived in Saigon (1966) I had occasion to visit the
local post office to pick up a letter.  I was amazed to find a room full of
people waving their letter notices in the air.  Upon finishing with one
customer, the clerk picked someone else out of the crowd.  Until then, I
thought people just naturally formed  a queue in that kind of situation.

It seems to me that a dx pileup is similar to that post office. There isn't
any queue.  If someone tailends successfully, did he or she cut the line?
There isn't any line to cut.  The nearest thing to a queue we've had is list
operations, which were loudly criticized by many.


While operating from southeast Asia, I had a chance to try out tailending/
no tailending on the daily pileups.  I found the qso rate noticeably higher
when I took tailenders, when signals were strong.  I had the next call as
soon as I took someone's report.  When signals were weak, there was less
difference.  It also helped a lot if the tailender was on a slightly
different frequency (this was all cw).  Perhaps the situation on phone is
different.  I wouldn't know about that, having lost my mike some years ago
and not having looked for it.

I was less concerned about whether tailending was an abomination or a work
of art, and more concerned about whether it was effective or not.

Larry, N9DX