[ADXA] Loose Cannon on the bands

Tue Dec 29 14:28:57 EST 2020

Along the same lines, but derails about halfway down my post, but still
somewhat relevant.

I was working with a new FT user several months ago.  He really didn't have
a full understanding of what was going on, like so many new users.  For
example, he would have someone answer his CQ and he returned the call.
Then he would log the contact and QSY to another frequency looking for a
new contact thinking he had completed the last contact.  He just left the
first one hanging out to dry and moved on.  And he wondered why they kept
sending him info after he logged the "contact" and just one TX response on
his part.  It took a lot of simulation on air to get him to understand that
it takes about 1 minute for the completion of the contact cycle.

Now that he understands FT protocol, it was on to LoTW and the WAS counts.
He thought if he worked 50 people in the USA, that was a WAS.  Not so, he
was missing out on the "A" (worked ALL states) no matter what band or how
many times he worked a single state.  And DXCC was an even bigger
challenge.  He would work a DX, say Canada or Mexico, on several bands and
wonder why his DXCC count didn't increase.  Again, he worked Canada or
Mexico on 5 bands and LoTW was showing only 2 DXCC and not 10.  We finally
drove those points home as well.

As for LoTW, he was wondering why if he logged them there, why they were
not confirmed as he had confirmed them in his own log.  And this guy has
been a ham for a couple decades, but never did anything but SSB, paper logs
and direct mail QSL's, so LoTW was a whole new world to him.  Finally
convinced him that it "Takes Two to Tango'' in the online logbook era.  All
along he was entering info from his QSL card stack to LoTW.  After my
"Elmering" I kinda took the air out of his overinflated ego.  Sorry guy.

He thought he was a lot further along on both WAS and DXCC until the
realization hit him.  Now he understands why it takes some folks (like me)
a long time to get my 1st DXCC and now even almost 3 of them in 45+ years
of operation.  But I do have DXCC's (mixed) on 7 bands now.  Only 92 to go
on 160m,  29 on 80m and 55 on 6m.  Antenna compromises on 160m and 80m are
my excuses for low counts there.  6m is just down due to propagation.

73's
George - WB5JJJ

4

On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 12:57 PM <w5zn at w5zn.org> wrote:

> Yea, that practice is very unfortunate.
>
> ZN
>
>
> On 2020-12-28 15:56, Rory Bowers wrote:
>
> I very seldom say anything about someone's operating procedure but EL2BG
> is a loose cannon.  I found him on 20M FT8 yesterday with a very nice
> signal from Liberia.  So I called him and he answered with a nice signal
> report.  That is when the problem started... no RR 73, no RRR... nothing.
> He left me stranded sending my signal report until I gave up, wondering
> what in the heck went wrong.  I watched the band for a few minutes and
> found him doing the same thing to other stations.  I tried another contact
> with him and he did the same thing again.  I sent him an email respectfully
> informing him that our attempts were not complete and not in my log.  He
> wrote back that his log says both were good and sent me this...
> [image: EL2BG.png]
> A blank QSL card by email.  Rich holds a DXCC and proclaims to be a Master
> Mason.  It is not acceptable in the fraternity to speak badly of a fellow
> Mason but I can not abide by his operating practice.
> 73,
> Rory, K5CKS
>
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