[Fists] QSY....

[Alan Tanner]

Well, if it were 4 to 10 years ago, I would agree on the calling freq idea.
A "CQ FISTS" on .058 or 1Khz up or down more or less would rarely go
unanswered, especially on 40 or 20 meters, and at night 80 also. Now an op
can often call til his finners are sore and rarely get an answer, and often
times the reply is from a non FIST member. I have found that ops new to CW,
or those who have trouble copying Morse, rarely have any idea what you are
trying to tell them. They are having enuff problems trying to get the RST,
name and QTH correct. Time and again the last few years I have made efforts
to ask ops questions about their equipment, antennas, bands of operation,
etc etc, only to have these questions ignored, while the op tells me the
usual WX etc. This tells me that he is NOT getting it. Trying to QSY with
the diminished skills of todays new ops are just an excercise in futility.
Besides, trying to do this at 5 to 8 WPM just takes too long. Nobody HAS to
learn Morse anymore, and I applaud the ops who do, however there is no
longer any stress put on P-R-O-C-E-E-D-U-R-E. I just have a QSO wherever I
happen to get it and move on. Like I said, it's not like .058 is packed like
in days gone by, or the band is full of prioficient ops, so lets just help
the new guys along and keep things simple. Plus, we sure don't need anymore
frequency cops as I believe those jobs are filled, and still have long
waiting lists. Keep QSO's simple unless you know the other guy is
understanding WHAT you are sending. New ops have a tendency to send faster
than they can copy, which ends up meaning they don't  copy much at all, and
are usually nervous to boot, so don't make it worse with a bunch of useless
jibberish that was not needed in the first place...........Tap
on.....Al/W8FAX/2192