On Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:29:03 +0000, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

Doug Smith wrote:
OK, we have a problem. Continuous callers.

We as in whom? It's IMHO part of a much greater problem. Back when morse
code was required to get a ham license was first dropped, many hams
claimed that the ability to send and receive morse code was a good way
of testing for good operating practices. If you were competent at code,
you were competent at ham radio operating.

This was as it turns out, a red herring, a diversion from the real
problem that good operating practices are related to good operating
practices and not related to morse code, typing, building a radio or any
other skills.

DX de W9WI: 14027.3 E44M QSX UP 3 1807z
- or -
DX de W9WI: 14025+/- E44M SPLIT 1807z

Your examples point out that in fact you are complaining about morse
code operators, although I expect that the same problem exists with
voice operators.

E44M may be a special case, because while there has been some
propigation to most of the world from this area, in the last few days,
there has been very little most of the time. In fact, worldwide
propigation from here has been very "spotty" since the decline of the
sunspot cycle.

E44M isn't really a special case -- last week I experienced the same
problem from the "DX" end. (Tennessee is hardly a "rare one"!)

Trying to work PH0AW on RTTY, and finding a couple of other Europeans -
who didn't have any of the characters "P" "H" "0" "A" "W" in their calls
- calling me every time I stopped transmitting. (they would have got
their QSO a lot faster if they'd let me finish with PH0AW first!)

And in general, this happens in EVERY pileup these days.

(BTW, E44M has actually been surprisingly loud here - they were even Q5
in the mobile on 40 last night around 0500z. I suppose they're far
enough south to escape some of the worst effects of the poor propagation.)

However, the real problem is that no one wants to learn good operating
practice anymore.

This is of course the basic problem. (and in part why this post is
titled "semi-facetous") Really, the spotting network is no more
responsible for this problem than the easy availablity of cars is
responsible for drunken driving. But one does have to wonder.....

--
/home/w9wi/.sig