CW operators pride themselves on being friendly. I attribute that to the fact that it’s harder to be hostile and insult someone on CW than it is on phone. Even so, I had a somewhat disturbing experience last night.
I fired up the rig on 40m, and since the Worked All Europe was still going on, I tuned up the band to the Fists frequency (7058 kHz). After calling QRL? and getting no response, I proceeded to call CQ. I got an immediate response, but instead of a valid callsign, the station signed QLF. I just ignored it, and tuned off the frequency, thinking that I may have inadvertently interfered with a QSO, although I heard no one, and no one had responded to my QRL?
About a half hour or so later, I called CQ on 7047 kHz. This time, a station sent “LID” immediately after my CQ. Not believing what I was hearing, I sent a “?” and the station sent “IDIOT”. Amazing. I called CQ again and had a nice QSO after that.
I hope this was an isolated incident. Maybe it was an OM who had a couple of pops and was feeling frisky. At any rate, there’s really no place on the ham bands for this type of behavior.
Have any of you had a similar experience lately?
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