[UK-CONTEST] Failure to Identify

[Paul O'Kane]

On 05/12/2011 10:34, John Lemay wrote:

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


That is a bit old-fashioned indeed :-)

My understanding is that the minimum
requirement for a "QSO" is the two-way
exchange and acknowledgement of callsigns.

Even that may not be as simple as it seems,
because one of the callsign exchanges may be
implied - as when we call a DX station or
a contester calling CQ, and give only our
own callsign.

RST is redundant, because generally it has
no meaning on HF - except that the ubiquitous
59(9) serves (perfectly well) as the callsign
acknowledgement when DXing.

For information, ARRL discards all reports
in their LOTW database - they may be present
in the logs you upload, but that's the last
anyone will see of them.

In contesting, the exchange of 59(9) is
redundant in the presence of any other
exchange element.  The are many examples
of contests with no exchange of "RST".

May I respectfully suggest that a better
alternative to signal strength reports
would be the signal-to-noise ratio, in db
at the receive location, similar to those
reported on the reverse beacon network.

73,
Paul EI5DI