A couple of days ago, I worked AC3EK. When he said his name was Harry, I did a double take. I couldn’t remember ever working a Harry, and sure enough, a search of my log failed to turn up anyone named Harry in my log. And, I have more than 22,500 QSOs in my computer log.
It seems like more and more operators are beginning to reply to my CQs with only their call signs, as if they were working a contest or calling a DX station. Not only that, they usually just send their call once. That’s doubly bad because not only am I not 100% sure that they’re calling me, but I don’t always get the call sign on the first go.
I usually reply with QRZ? to get them to send my call sign, but sometimes I get lazy and just reply to them. I do wish that they would follow the correct operating procedure, though.
Finally, I had a QSO with Chris, N8AI earlier this evening. He’s one of the monitoring stations in the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN). RBN connects a bunch of stations who are always monitoring the bands for signals. When they receive a station, they automatically report the callsign, frequency, and a signal-to-noise radio (SNR).
Sometimes, you get a lot of spots, but no return calls. This was happening just before Chris answered my CQ. I was getting spotted by stations in Europe as well as here in the U.S., but no one returned my call. The SNRs ranged from 3 dB to 19 dB.
My question to Chris was how to read the SNR reports. At what level should I consider my signal strong enough to hold a decent QSO. He told me that the generally accepted level was about 20 dB. If your SNR is below that, you’re not likely to get calls.
That seems kind of high to me. 20 dB would be 3 S units above the noise level. It makes me wonder if hams are getting lazy about calling stations even though their signals might be a little weak. What do you think?
Walter Underwood says
If the RBN stations are in low noise areas, they could easily have a couple of S-units advantage over the average station.
Theo - SV2BBK says
I always appreciate good operating practices and procedures Dan. When calling CQ and getting a reply with only a call sign I might be caught off guard and ask for a repeat but if correct procedure is followed I am alert and seldom miss their call sign :-)
Mark AB0CW says
If an op just throws out his callsign after I call CQ, instead of following standard procedure, I ignore them. It’s just plain laziness on their part. I just call CQ again. You are right, how do you know they are calling your station.
Dave New, N8SBE says
Exact opposite happened to me.
I was IN a contest (CQ WPX CW) and someone dropped just their callsign. I responded with my exchange, and the other side sent a couple of ??’s, so I repeated it. Then they responded with TNX FER CALL, OM. NAME HR IS xxxx, QTH is yyyyy — you get the picture.
I just tuned off of him and found another station to work that was actually in the contest.
Also, I have a nearly constant S3-S5 noise level here, so any station running 20 db (I presume this was measured in a 500 Hz BW) would still be buried in my noise floor. By dropping my BW to 200 Hz or less, I can get a leg up on the noise, but it would of course be much better to not have to fight all the digital debris in the first place.