[Elecraft] K3 #1037 in IARU contest

[Jim Brown]

On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:33:34 -0600, Bill W5WVO wrote:

>Jim and Ed, your thoughts would be appreciated, along with those of others
>who are long-time SSB contest operators.

I'm certainly not an expert on the politics or psychology of it, but my mom 
had no shy children, and I have on more than one occasion let someone know 
when they are making nasties. I do the same thing when fools talk through 
jazz concerts ("could you please yell a little louder? -- we're missing 
words now and then"). Responses range from thanks to screw you. No 
surprise. 

IMO, good hams appreciate being told when they're making a mess, and they 
do something about it. Three examples. A year or so ago, I modded a rig to 
add an RX antenna input the day before a 160 contest. It caused the rig to 
oscillate when I switched to one of the Beverages, and I was making a mess. 
Someone told me, I thanked them, did a workaround for the rest of that 
night that prevented the splatter, and did a real fix the next day. If I 
hadn't been able to fix it I would have gone QRT or switched to a different 
rig. A few months earlier, my neighbor K6XX told me I was making clix. We 
spent 10-20 minutes chasing it down to the carrier detection circuitry in a 
TimeWave ANC-4. I pulled it out of line, and now we can work within a kHz 
or so of each other (we both use K3s and kW amps). And a few months before 
that, I told K6XX he was making clix on FD. It was an FT1000MP he had 
bought used a few days before, and it didn't have the click mod. He fixed 
it the next week!  

73,

Jim K9YC