[Elecraft] RE:K7C

[DYARNES at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/2/2005 8:12:53 AM US Mountain Standard Time,  
j.t.rogers at charter.net writes:

I  have wasted many hours trying to work them. The pileups are horrendous.
The  lids are out in tremendous force. 


I agree with you.  I get mad as hell at ops who will continue to send  their 
callsign, even when the DX station has acknowledged a different  station.  And 
they will do it right on top of the station  acknowledged!  Or, when the DX 
station acknowledges part of a call, like  "W5?", but some klutz W9 keeps 
sending his call!  But most of these  pile-ups are pure chaos.  I don't have much 
hope that they will every be  run in an orderly and courteous manner.  There 
are just too many folks  out there who are at least completely oblivious to the 
process, if not so  arrogant they ignore common courtesy.  
 
I must say though, that I haven't been all that impressed with at least one  
or two of the K7C ops.  A couple of times on 40 meters I heard K7C working  
stations, and obviously listening "up", but not saying so!  This really  created 
a mess!  Some stations kept calling on his sending frequency, then  others 
would chime in with "up", but a minute later it was chaos again on the  sending 
frequency.  On top of that, there were stations calling K7C as much  as 10 khz 
up, and he was acknowledging them!  That chews up a bunch of  bandwidth.  It 
took me forever to figure out where he was listening.   Maybe the op at K7C 
was doing this on purpose to spread callers out, but I don't  agree with the 
process.  He should say "up" at least, and give the amount,  like "up 1", or "up 
4".  Callers will naturally spread out around this  figure, usually between 
the sending frequency and the listening figure given,  but not all over the 
band!  Personally, I think "up 4" is plenty of  bandwidth for any DX operation.  
If you can't pick stations out in that  range, you have a receiving problem--or 
an operator problem!   And I  think the DX stations should give his call at 
least every 3rd or 4th qso.   Some don't give it for really long periods of 
time, and that creates all kinds  of confusion on the sending frequency with 
inquiries about who the heck it is,  etc.
 
So, yes there are a bunch of "lids" out there.  But you can't call  some guy 
a lid if he doesn't have a reasonable amount of information to  ignore!  It's 
too bad these operations don't follow a more organized and  standardized 
procedure.  Probably never happen, but it sure would eliminate  as least some of 
the confusion that seems to occur every time.
 
One last thought.  If somebody keeps calling on the "sending"  frequency when 
the DX station is actually listening "up", it's o.k. to tell him  "up", and 
if you know how many, tell him that too.  But don't call him a  "lid", even if 
he is acting like one--most of these occurrances are  accidental (maybe he 
forgot to hit the "split" button--I've done that more  than once), but the real 
"lid" will only be encouraged to continue in  retribution.  After all, "lids" 
don't get that way by being responsive to  strong direction!
 
Dave W7AQK