[Fists] Is it just me?

[ke9v@yahoo.com]

I've noticed myself becoming much more picky about the CQs I answer.
Frankly, life is just too short to suffer through a QSO with a crummy
fist. I know, that sounds awful, and I suppose it's none too friendly
on my part, but it just happens. As I am typing this I am listening to
a KA1 calling CQ and he is running the letters of his callsign
together so badly that I had to listen four or five times to decipher
his callsign. I was about to reach for the paddles and call him back
but then I stopped. How many QSOs have I endured where I had to really
work and sweat to figure out what the heck the operator on the other
end was trying to send because his fist was so poor? So I passed on
the KA1 and let someone else "work" for that QSO.

I'm not talking about speed, QRN, QRM, proper procedural signs or
tone. I'm talking about sloppy sending plain and simple. You know what
I mean, if the letter "H" has four dits then by golly five or six dits
are so much the better, etc. This is just poor amateur practice, isn't
it?

Maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy, but the "joy" has certainly
gone out of the game for me when a fellow two states over with a 599
signal is trying to tell me his weather and I have to work my tail off
to decipher his crappy sending. I don't feel that I should tell the
guy he has a horrible fist (kinda like telling someone at a party they
have bad breath) so I just dream up some excuse to go QRT and get the
heck out.

Is it just me or is sloppy sending becoming an epidemic?

-- 
Jeff, KE9V