Random notes about my recent operations:
- “?” is not a proper response to QRL?
Last night, someone responded to my call of QRL? with a question mark. This is not the first time that this has happened. This is not a proper response. Let me repeat that. This is not a proper response. How the heck is the station sending QRL? supposed to respond to that?
- “?” is a proper response to a CQ.
I also got that last night. Generally, that means that I’m sending too fast for the station to copy my call. (Hopefully, they were able to understand the CQ part.) When I hear a question mark after my CQ, I slow down so that the other station can copy my call. Doing so has resulted in several nice QSOs, including the one with N0JTE last night.
- EAs on 30m.
On the evening of January 25, I worked 3 EAs in a row on 30m:- EA8BLV
- EA2SS
- EA2DPA
It’s really not all that unusual for me to work EAs on 30m, but it was unusual to work three in a row. Also, I didn’t really hear any other Europeans on that night, and it’s been a while since 30m has been open to Europe.
- Dit, W8IX.
A couple of days later, I worked Dit, W8IX. First of all, it was remarkable because of his nickname. It isn’t a result of his affinity for Morse Code, but because his last name is Ditmer. The second remarkable thing about the QSO is that Dit now has the callsign W8IX because it’s the call of his Elmer, the original W8IX. The original W8IX worked a spark-gap transmitter back in the day! You can read the story on W8IX’s QRZ.Com page.
Andrew KE8P says
Maybe it’s me and the fact that I don’t know code (but I want to know code), but if I heard you or anyone else calling CQ too fast for me, I’d probably reply with de KE8P QRS PSE.
I don’t know if that’s the correct procedure, but it gets the point across and the QSO can continue in a much smoother fashion – the calling station can return with “KE8P DE N0CALL N0CALL” etc…