In a message dated 10/2/2005 8:12:53 AM US Mountain Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I have wasted many hours trying to work them. The pileups are horrendous. The lids are out in tremendous force. I agree with you. I get mad as hell at ops who will continue to send their callsign, even when the DX station has acknowledged a different station. And they will do it right on top of the station acknowledged! Or, when the DX station acknowledges part of a call, like "W5?", but some klutz W9 keeps sending his call! But most of these pile-ups are pure chaos. I don't have much hope that they will every be run in an orderly and courteous manner. There are just too many folks out there who are at least completely oblivious to the process, if not so arrogant they ignore common courtesy. I must say though, that I haven't been all that impressed with at least one or two of the K7C ops. A couple of times on 40 meters I heard K7C working stations, and obviously listening "up", but not saying so! This really created a mess! Some stations kept calling on his sending frequency, then others would chime in with "up", but a minute later it was chaos again on the sending frequency. On top of that, there were stations calling K7C as much as 10 khz up, and he was acknowledging them! That chews up a bunch of bandwidth. It took me forever to figure out where he was listening. Maybe the op at K7C was doing this on purpose to spread callers out, but I don't agree with the process. He should say "up" at least, and give the amount, like "up 1", or "up 4". Callers will naturally spread out around this figure, usually between the sending frequency and the listening figure given, but not all over the band! Personally, I think "up 4" is plenty of bandwidth for any DX operation. If you can't pick stations out in that range, you have a receiving problem--or an operator problem! And I think the DX stations should give his call at least every 3rd or 4th qso. Some don't give it for really long periods of time, and that creates all kinds of confusion on the sending frequency with inquiries about who the heck it is, etc. So, yes there are a bunch of "lids" out there. But you can't call some guy a lid if he doesn't have a reasonable amount of information to ignore! It's too bad these operations don't follow a more organized and standardized procedure. Probably never happen, but it sure would eliminate as least some of the confusion that seems to occur every time. One last thought. If somebody keeps calling on the "sending" frequency when the DX station is actually listening "up", it's o.k. to tell him "up", and if you know how many, tell him that too. But don't call him a "lid", even if he is acting like one--most of these occurrances are accidental (maybe he forgot to hit the "split" button--I've done that more than once), but the real "lid" will only be encouraged to continue in retribution. After all, "lids" don't get that way by being responsive to strong direction! Dave W7AQK _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
