KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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How to end a contact

Posted: 10 Mar 2021 06:54 AM PST
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If you like to actually converse with other hams on the air, theres always
an issue with when and how to end a contact. Its bad enough on phone when
there are no visual cues and even worse on CW because there are no audible
cues. A recent article that I came across online, 2 Science-Backed Ways to
Politely End a Conversation, might offer some help in this regard.

The article reports that Adam Mastroianni, now a Ph.D. student at Harvard
University, recently conducted a study on how conversations end. His
results suggest that conversations almost never end when both participants
want them to stop. Ive certainly found this to be true. There are many
times that Id like to continue a conversation with someone on the air, but
the other ham signs off. Conversely, sometimes I find myself in a contact
where I just dont hit it off with the other operator, and Im the one
pulling the plug.

He offers two suggestions for how to end conversations gracefully:

Make your partner feel good about the end of the conversation by clearly
communicating that you had a nice time and would like to talk again. Swap
out gotta run and swap in hey, its been great to talk with you — I should
get going, but lets talk more soon, for example.

We almost always do this in CW. TNX FER QSO is normally a part of the last
transmission.

The article also suggests:

You can solve both problems by being clear about how long a conversation is
going to last beforehand, either by scheduling or by attaching your
conversation to an activity that has a fairly clear time course, he
explains. Saying you only have a certain amount of time to talk at the
start of the chat is a good place to start.

This might be a bit harder to do on the air, but some operators do this
when answering a CQ. Theyll say something like, HI DANHRD U CALLING ES JUST
WANTED TO SAY HI or ONLY HV A FEW MINS. I appreciate those calls,
especially if Ive been calling CQ for a while.

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