Back in the Paleolithic era (around 1994), there were only two ham
reflectors - DX, run by a VE (sorry, I forget his call) and CQ-Contest.
I remember how people used to go to great lengths to include the word
"contest" somewhere in their posts on CQ-Contest, even when the real
subject of their interest was something else. Eventually, that led to
the proliferation of ham reflectors like Towertalk, Topband, RFI and so on.
Back in the day, people posting on the reflectors took great pains
always to sign their names and callsigns, and to sign off with "73" (or
"73's" - hi). I've noticed in the last couple of years that the advent
of texting has led to a proliferation of unsigned messages on the
reflectors, as if people forget that they are writing not just to one
person who knows them well, but for an audience of hundreds or
thousands. It is becoming almost unusual to see "73, Bob N6AAA" at the
bottom of a message anymore.
I've always felt that we lose something when we decouple our posts from
our calls. I do hope that maybe people will consider this, and take the
few extra seconds (or store a standard signature in their e-mail
programs) so that in the new year this marker of our community becomes a
bit more common.
Meanwhile, I'd like to suggest that we all pause in this holiday season
to consider how lucky we are to be in this wonderful hobby, and to say
thank you to the people at contesting.com for their quiet generosity all
these years, supporting the core of the ham reflector community.
Thanks, as well, to the thousands of people on all the various
reflectors who give freely of their time and knowledge to help others
who share their interest in some aspect of the ham radio adventure.
--
73, Pete N4ZR
The World Contest Station Database, updated daily at www.conteststations.com
The Reverse Beacon Network at http://reversebeacon.net, blog at
reversebeacon.blogspot.com,
spots at telnet.reversebeacon.net, port 7000 AND now
at arcluster.reversebeacon.net port 7000
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