[UK-CONTEST] Failure to Identify

[Gerry Lynch]

On 5 Dec 2011, at 11:34, "John Lemay" <john at carltonhouse.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:

> Perhaps I can be really old fashioned here, and suggest that a qso requires
> a minimum exchange of both callsigns and a report ?

No, you can't. As far as contest operating goes, if I take a risk and guess a callsign off the cluster, I get a nice fat penalty in the log check. So it makes no sense. If I do it outside a contest, I then waste time and dorras on a QSL to a station who is going to return the card (minus the dollars) with Not In Log marked.

So the only people who don't get penalised in that situation are people who don't care about contests or QSLs but like either bragging to themselves or others that they've worked DX which they haven't actually worked. And people like that will never actually get it.

As for the general decline in operating standards, it is certainly true but I think a bit overstated. Some of us did warn that of we were going to import tens of thousands of people from 2m FM and CB onto HF then operating standards would suffer. Pretty obvious, actually, and perhaps it was worth it for the record levels of HF DX and contest activity we currently enjoy. But let's not pretend that operating standards wouldn't be higher if one still didn't have to do the RAE and the morse to get on HF, and indeed if telecoms regulators still gave a monkey's about amateur radio. But that is now long passed into never never land.

All the same, since I started operating in 1991, pileups have always been messy and big, rare DXpedition pileups have always attracted lots of deliberate QRM. And that wasn't new in 1991, either. It has got worse, but not all that much worse.

What has changed is that ragchewing and general daily amateur activity has declined massively while contesting and DX chasing has become massively more popular, in part aided by an influx from VHF post-Morse abolition, in part aided by IT that makes it all easier and more fun. Remember the days when you would struggle to find a CQ frequency on 20 metres on a Summer weekday evening? Long gone.

On the other hand, competitive amateur radio has become massively higher-paced. Massively. For those of us who have a bit of a clue, this again makes it easier and more fun, especially on CW. But not everyone has a clue; I think there is as much cluelessness as wilfully bad operating out there. I also think that some of the wilfully bad operating is done by people who wouldn't if someone explained to them what exactly is happening in a pileup. (If anyone hasn't read W9KNI yet, I recommend him highly.)

As for all the big stations that allegedly exist in 'Europe' (where DO you chaps live? The lost continent of Atlantis?) I think that's overstated. There is a bit of British mythology about all the big QRO stations in Eastern Europe/Italy/the USA). Most amateurs worldwide are running 100 Watts or less into less than optimal antennas. Ok, Italy and Spain are different!!! I've also met more than the occasional G amateur who was running an Acom 1k or even Acom 2k into that backyard G5RV. And heard plenty of bad behaviour from Gs when operating from DX. Not as much as from the Med but considerably more than from DL or Scandinavia and on SSB (if not CW) at least as much as from Eastern Eu.

I certainly always felt pretty competitive in SSB pileups with 100 Watts and a doublet at about 12m or so and in CW pileups that was usually a killer. It's different for the once in 10 years sort of activations, when the grandads with the big amps and the honour roll status remember that shunt fed tower they use on 160 has a 4 element yagi on top. Similarly, the States is full of people with really crappy signals that you don't realise even exist unless you're operating at a big contest station or you're operating from the Caribbean.

Of course in a zero beat SSB pileup on a VK6 stations to the east will have a propagation advantage and that sort of situation is always a bit of a shouting match. But to the Caribbean and W we have massive advantages we rarely appreciate. I couldn't believe how much weaker the west coast was from DR1A (5 over 5 monobanders at excellent heights) than G6PZ (4 over 4 SteppIRs at just-about-acceptable heights). And DR1A is as far West as it gets in DL.

As for the DX not-identifying, I don't see anything wrong with a quick CL? on CW or "What's your call?" on SSB, if timed to be as non-disruptive as possible. If enough people do it, they get the hint.

73

Gerry DL/Gi0RTN on a train creaking through the Ruhr Valley...