Indeed, stuff happens. But it's a sobering reminder that Hams are responsible for securing transmitters so they cannot be operated by an unlicensed individual, much less put in transmit mode accidentally. For most of us, having the shack inside our home eliminates unlicensed operators, but the accidental transmission is just as bad.
AFAIK, the FCC doesn't levy huge fines easily to such people, recognizing that accidents can happen, but it's still a very serious violation of the FCC rules. Careless is never an excuse. Part of the design of any Ham station *must* be a positive way of disabling the transmitter(s) when the licensee is not present. Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- Once a cleaning lady pushed a book against a microphone switch on a two meter rig, and it keyed up the 5 state Mt. Beacon, NY 146.97 repeater for nearly 20 hours before it was located with direction finding gear. What was amazing was that it didn't set the room on fire. The door to the shack was closed to the room as was its window, and when we went upstairs with the very red-faced ham and opened the door, the temp was easily 120 degrees inside. The 2 meter transmitter was a converted tube type mobile phone that ran nearly 100 watts to a ceramic transmitting tube. His friends found out about it because some of them heard us on an alternate wide coverage repeater chasing it down and showed up as we were leaving. Probably never lived it down. A friend in the Raleigh area with a good signal on 80 meters in the Sweepstakes, left the rig to get a snack, but forgot to turn off his auto-CQ which auto resumed. While in the kitchen he decided to take a nap. Lot of people answered his CQ but got no reply. He claims that he just sat back down to the rig a half hour later and started working people. It took a bunch of us in the local club to "convince" him that he had really done it. I'm still not sure he really believed us. Stuff happens. 73, Guy. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
