My mom raised me so when there was something wrong with the system I should
change it. Usually that just gets me into trouble, but I have to do it,
because I spend my life trying to please my mom (psychology).
I haven't been serious in SS since my hair was all black, so being new at it
again, I wanted to air my SS beefs because I think we have the ears of the
people on this reflector who have the power to take actions to help these
situations:
1. Already mentioned in one of the 3830 posts - the practice of using
leading zeros in SS #s should be discouraged. In all the "how to operate
this contest even though you think you can't" articles, the authors would
serve the contest well to add a sentence saying "Using leading zeroes (i.e.
'NR 001') is not required by the rules, and most SS operators don't bother
with them. Just send '#1')"
2. While we're at that, what could be said to discourage those awful "short
integers" - where when a guy's number is #190, he sends "NR ANT" to "save
time." Notice the "save time" is in quotes. Again, the article-writers
could take the lead effectively here.
3. What on earth can we do to make "PREC?" easier for more people to
understand? If I shot myself for every time somebody either sent the WRONG
thing or his WHOLE exchange when I asked "PREC?" this weekend I'd be out of
bullets by now. Here's an idea: if we think of it as part of the number, we
could model the desired behavior (psychology again) and just ALWAYS tack it
onto the number when asked for a fill on the number, i.e. when asked "NR?"
we would reply "859B" instead of "859". If all respectable operators did
this then everyone could get over the potential pitfall of "some do and some
don't", and 10 years from now when you say "NR" to some ridiculously weak
guy who thinks QRP is cool he'll say "45Q" so you don't have to ask him for
his "PREC?" separately and risk his not understanding what you meant, even
though you're S9+40 on his HW-7. Other ideas welcome, but maybe we should
pick one and stick with it and get it publicized and model it to the people
who don't know better.
So, we have the power to fix all these things. In the mean time, I have my
own ways of sneaking the "PREC?" out of anybody who doesn't know what a PREC
is, but that's a SS Secret.
Great to be back in SS. Two radios has made it a completely different, and
better, contest.
Mark, N5OT
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