Thanks for all of your responses.
Relatively few people feel as strongly about this as I do, which kind of
surprises me. Also surprising: that more of the top tier contesters had
apparently no opinion on the matter.
I don't mean to be an ass about this, I really don't. But I must respond to the
following.
A number of folks are in favor of keeping the (meaningless) signal report --
not as a piece of useful information in and of itself, but as a 'signal that
what is to follow is an important piece of information'. C'mon. After thousands
and thousands of contest exchanges, you don't know the format of the exchange?
I don't buy that a contester needs a '5NN' to serve that function. Many other
contests do not need such an 'attention' signal.
As a side note, years ago on this reflector there was considerable discussion
about using such a practice on phone. I believe I was one of the people that
admitted using "Thank you, please copy..." or some such 'attention' before
sending my exchange and I recall being publicly excoriated in this forum for
being so blatantly inefficient, for slowing down your rate, etc., etc. It is
interesting that the same 'attention' argument does not hold on phone. I wonder
why that is.
A number of folks suggested that I send a real signal report. At first I
thought this advice was being given sarcastically but now I'm not sure. An
honest question: if, in the next contest, I send realistic signal reports, are
you going to be okay with that? Consider this fair warning.
All in all, these seemed to me to be weak arguments that mask some hidden
reason which perhaps is along the lines of, "It's always been that way, so
let's not change it." Hey, if that's the reason, that's the reason, but we all
seem to be in denial, as nobody simply came out and said it. I don't the know
the history behind this thing... perhaps the signal report has *never* been
taken seriously in the history of contesting.
We contesters are so fanatically efficient in every other aspect leading up to
t minus zero, in the chair and ready to go, and then screw it all up with the
meaningless, dehumanizing nonsense that is 5NN. Amazing.
W6LX said that.
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