[ARC5] I've Been Bootlegged! Call AB5S "Borrowed"

[Christopher Bowne]

I was wondering about a similar thing, perhaps someone CQing st a very high speed perhaps AB5H is being intercepted by the aDBN but dits were dropped in the detection.  I’ve seen that happen on my call where in addition to my own intercepts for AJ1G being posted, an occasional AJ1N  spot will be sprinkled in, even at moderate (20-22 WPM).  Your call or a similar call like yours has three characters with lots of dits in them, one missed or one spurious extra dit would easily upset the apple cart.

There was a similar case which kept showing up on 6 meters where a JA station would consistently show up on an RBN in Hungary with absurdly high SNRs.  Turned out an RBN skimmer was repeatedly corrupting the callsign of a beacon only a few miles away from it.  Eventually the beacon was showing up correctly detected on other skimmers simultaneously and one couldn see from the  similarity of all but one of the call sign characters what was going on.

I’ve also seen my call show up on the RBN randomly from
corrupted detections of RTTY  stations.

Chris AJ1G
Stonington CT

which likely
Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 11, 2026, at 11:31, Bill KA8VIT <ka8vit at ka8vit.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> I've had a similar thing happened.
>  
> My buddy's call kept popping up on HamAlert, (an Android app that monitors the RNB, DX Spots and more for triggers you have set).
>  
> But when I spoke with him he said he hadn't been on the air.
>  
> This happened a lot, usually during the afternoon hours when I was not near a radio.
>  
> It went on for over a year!
>  
> Then, one day I was finally able to get on the air when an alert happened and caught the guy on the air.
>  
> Turned out, the OP's call was W8ABC but he liked to put a pause between the last two characters of his call...
>  
> Example:   W8AB.....C
>  
> He always sent it that way.
>  
> My friend's call is W8AB,  (example).
>  
> But the RBN always copied that guy's call as W8AB and not W8ABC triggering the alerts.
>  
> 73 - BILL KA8VIT / W8COD
>  
>  
> ====================================
> Bill Chaikin, KA8VIT
> Chief Radio Operator
> WW2 Submarine USS COD SS-224 (NECO)
>  
> ka8vit at ka8vit.com
> http://ka8vit.com
> http://www.usscod.org
> ====================================
>  
>> On 01/11/2026 11:03 AM EST David Stinson <arc5 at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>  
>>  
>> I was checking the "Reverse Beacon Network"
>> and found something eye-bugging.
>> Someone is working 30 WPM CW, mostly contests,
>> Many, many QSOs using my call sign, AB5S.
>> I did none of them.  My station has been down
>> for months. Take a look at this:
>> https://tinyurl.com/yhksaffv
>> 
>> I mean- I know AB5S is a good call for CW,
>> but a polite request might have been in order.
>> 
>> I support CW and might even have designated
>> him an op if he had asked, but I have no idea
>> about him.  He could be up to no good, or maybe
>> he's old like me and misread his license,
>> or who knows?
>> 
>> I asked three of the guys he contacted last night on 80M:
>> Did he give you a name and QTH?  Did he
>> give any other clues as to where he might be?
>> We'll see what they say.
>> The reverse beacon reports the origin point 
>> to be Nevada, Texas, of course.  It listens for
>> the transmissions, but doesn't do any DFing.
>> 
>> Maybe I've been sleep walking??
>> What would you do?
>> If found, maybe I should charge him rent?
>> 
>> TNX ES 73 DE Dave (the real) AB5S."" ______________________________________________________________ ARC5 mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/arc5 Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:ARC5 at mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: https://www.qsl.net/donate.html
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