For the past several years, I have often been called with only the caller's call sign. Only once. No my call nor DE before his call sign etc. Very simple. I noticed those callers always make the simplest style of QSO. No ragchewing at all. When they finish the message least necessary, they always finish their sending with BK withoug IDs. As soon as the message exchanges of least necessity are over, they quit leaving least greetings to me.
I noticed they might use a memory keyer. The keyer might send his call once. All the operator is doing is just pushing a button of the memory keyer. The other messages could be from the memories as well. He might be watching the display decoding my message. It is the same as RTTY or other digital modes.
I hope I won't guess right. But observing carefully of those hit and run operators, I must say there are pretty numerous guys operating CW in this way. I won't mercilessly deny and accuse them for their irregular CW operation. And there could be some hams who would become proficient in CW after operating in this way. However, watching conversations on CW may promise them much faster learning of CW and much more fruitful enjoyment of CW in the future.
Hi Shin!
ReplyDeleteIn most case your right. In the other hand, some times I hear a good friend like DL3AZ or SP9DBA so on and so forth I don't send his call, but only mine or just send DE IMI, just for the fun and we would still keep up with our conversation for one and a half two hours. I do this with those friends of mine whom I regularly have conversations with :-) otherwise I also send both calls and expect the other party to do the same for me, because otherwise I would think, he calls someone else.
I would think that, because mostly people simply won't zero beat on a certain station they call therefore they are not exactly on other party's qrg. ( They might call a dxpedition)
Finishing a sentence without ID yourself is working only when both party is using QSK and they are both doing QRQ and have a long conversation. This can be a lot of fun though, because it can be like a telephone conversation, and we are all know that in a telephone conversation we don't ID, because it would be a little awkward. :-)
I know! It is could be rude, but if two guys so much in to a subject, they just simply forget to ID themselves. If someone ask for it will certainly get an answer with both parties ID.
You mentioned about memory keyers. Nobody would believe it how much I hate that procedure, because pretext messages means no respect. The other party won't respect me as much as he would sends his code on his own, but pressing a knob, sitting back and thinking about something else. Not to mention he tries to show others, how good cw op he is :-) by making error free code sending.
I know a few guys like that. Matter of fact I know one very well known person who does that and he won't recognise the fact, that how annoying his pretext can be. Especially when he makes QSO's one by one and saying exactly the very same thing over and over. I mean not only a just a usual RST, wx, rig stuff, but he also says a bunch of stuff about hobbies and other things.
Using decoder is can be annoying, but it can also help guys to improve their cw skills. It can help crank up their receiving abilities and going to break through the so called brick wall.
If they are only have a quick look at the screen, because they couldn't copy one or two words, or just derailed, then the decoder could be a help, but if they use it all the time as reading every single words, that way it won't improve anything.......in fact it would becoming a boring routine. That way cw will lose it natural beauty.
I hope to see you soon Shin San!
161 Imi HA7AP
Imi,
DeleteConversation on CW, I know, could be done in the way you described. In '60s, I heard, K6NB and VK2NS, who used to keep regular skeds on 40m, could recognize each other only by a dot. But these cases are exceptional. I would emphasize to newbies that they should identify themselves in addtion to sending the call sign they are calling. It is a rule of thumb, if not mentioning about the legal rule. When they get accoustomed with CW conversation and have got any good old friend like you do with DL3AZ etc, they could omit the IDs etc.
I fully understand the decoder could be of much help to beginners as you told. But I believe the different CNS areas are responsible for watching the display and listening to CW. Whey they only read on the display, they could not listen to it at the same time. I have already told this relationship in a post in this blog. Reading the log in the past on display after a QSO and confirming what he copied might be of help to him.
Regrettably, your QRQ conversations could hardly reach here in the East Asia!
Shin
I can see you have thought this through completely, and I suspect you may be correct! I have listened to many operators doing exactly the same thing you mention, but never gave it a thought that it was code generated from a memory, and that the individual was watching the return information directly from a display that was generated by computer also. I have listened many times to hams who use keyboards to generate their conversations on CW, which is easy to copy in my head, but lacks any personality! With so many hams using advanced forms of digital generation of cw, you do not get the feeling that was presented when the code was generated by a hand key or a bug, and the keyer generated cw does not have any special traits from an individual. So copy by an experienced CW operator essentially does not truly have any knowledge of how the other person is actually sending and receiving the characters, or how that person is "feeling" at the time the message is sent. Obviously this emotionless form of morse code use is functional, but is no different than the contest QSO which for years irritated many old time cw operators. I knew so many elder gentlemen who groomed me in proper CW sending/receiving and how to enjoy cw as a medium of talking. I know that this digital memory type of QSO goes on with Voice Users during contests also. They often use memorized female voices to say "CQ Contest" and then reply by a memory that gives a signal report in a memorized digital manner along with the serial number, much like the GPS giving you directions on how to arrive at your destination. In today's world of digital it would be possible to make entire QSO's for contests on voice without the operator saying a single word himself during the contact. Carrying your thought process a bit further, if the voice contacts were digitally fabricated, what is stopping a person from literally converting this operating technique into a machine that would do all the work for you and log all your information for sending to the contest judges so you could win an award! Back when I first began reading QST magazine they had a few APRIL editions with stories of people who had built such a machine for contests on CW, so they could win the honor of being the TOP DOG! Those of us who truly enjoy the personal conversations via CW, for the most part prefer that they get a sense of feel from the person that they are communicating with. This entire world of today is full of machine generated communications devices without feeling, other than perhaps the fact that sometimes people will say something unique that shows the communication was started by a human.
ReplyDeletePerhaps that is why I do not have any desire to do "Texting" or other forms of communication using "Today's Devices" I still prefer a bug and CW with imperfections that is totally generated by the individual. Slower perhaps, but definitely more enjoyable!
Bob Gates
W7AYN
Hi Bob,
DeleteVoice recorders or memory keyers are handy devices. But when we depend on those, it may deprive us of a kind of pleasure of communication. I fully agree with you. Let's stay with hand generating CW apparatus together.
Maybe, we could neglect those "one call" callsers.
See you soon.
Shin