Topband: Chat Room Confirmation

[Diane and Edward Swynar]

On 15th February, Dave wrote:

"...I'm not advocating chat room confirmation, but I'm not sure what, if
any, harm is caused by this practice..."

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I was always lukewarm, at BEST, when it came to such things as "The ON4KST
Low-Band Chat Room" (or, "How do you hear me now...?!")...but the more I
thought about it, the more I came to realize that I was just as an
enthusiastic supporter of a similar such approach to "group DX'ing" back in
1981...

My friend VE3IHK (who lived several blocks away) and I used to chase DX on
40-meters in the wee hours after coming home from working the night shift:
he used 2-element parastic delta loop array, & I used a 2-element phased
delta loop array. We ran similar power levels, and it was most interesting
to "compare notes on the fly" as we scanned the band---but the technology we
employed 30 years ago was far and awy different from the on-line world-wide
web of to-day!

I had a massive rack-mounted G.E. "Prog Line" rock-bound to a simplex
frequency on 2-meters that I shared with 'IHK. Our "party line" was
established by way of my wearing one of those then-popular small ear-bud
'phones, inside my regular headphones!

It was crude, but effective---and the only difference between then & now is
the level of technology used to achieve the same end, and the size of the
audience & number of participants who can now answer the eternal question
of, "How do you hear me now...?!"    :>)

~73~ de Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ