A chirpy signal – is an honest report rude?
Some time ago I heard a CQ from a DX station with a severe chirp to his CW note. He was calling “CQ NA” and wanted to know in which state his contacts were located, evidently working toward his W.A.S.
I called and exchanged 599 reports with him and told him I was in Texas. After sending his report of 599 (and he was quite strong), I sent “chirp” - but I did it with hesitation. In some cases, we’ve come to expect inflated signal reports and refrain from anything that could be misconstrued as criticism.
Does “good manners” trump honesty?
To find out, I hung around a bit in order to see what signal reports others gave him. Six out of 10 mentioned his chirp in some way, either by saying so directly or implying a problem with the signal report they gave…”595″ or “591″ were both given. The other four gave “599″ with no mention of a problem.
Personally, I – as with most other callers – prefer to give an honest report. After all, I’d want to know if I were putting out such a signal so that I could do something about it. However, I can see one scenario that might call for leaving it at a “599″ – that would be if the DX was in a very poor country and was likely making the best of what he had available.
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Themocracy
If the other station were in a first world country, I would definitely report the chirp. I thought the accepted way of doing that was to add a “C” to the end of the report, as in 579C. That’s what I have done in the past.
If my signal were less than perfect, I’d want to know. Of course, if the other station is using a G3XBM “chirpy” TX/RX, you probably don’t need to report the chirp, as it is a given :-)
Often when I hear a weak chirpy signal, I imagine it to be an intrepid world-explorer – perhaps a sailor operating from a remote part of the ocean and down to his last set of batteries. It usually turns out to be something quite a bit less exotic than that!
Yes, adding a “C” to the report has been the way in the past but it’s so infrequent now to send/receive anything less than “599″ that I don’t know how many are aware of it. Exceptions to the 599 reports are ragchews and QRP operating where reports tend to be more honest.
You have a vivid imagination Dave – auroral, over-the-pole flutter does it for me!
I often hear badly keyed signals. Some are just too sharply formed keying envelopes, other are chirping, other came from overdriven linears… I also have a JA station that should be using some kind of SDR and he has plain loss of signals in his keying. Sometime I have to ask him to repeat 3 times… No one of these stations are QRP and poor, just badly operated.
The truth is that nowadays no one want to give you honest reports for several reasons. One day in a phone contest I found a chinese who was running QRO but with an awful audio. Since it was close to noon I took time to told him he had a problem, but the only works he knew in english were “thank you” and “good luck” so I gave up.
About third world countries you should care that many HAM stations in those countries are not poor, sometime it is all the contrary. On characteristic of 3rd world countries is the increase gap between rich and poor. On the air you can find a university teacher having low wages but also the main importer of radio gears selling thousands of transceiver to the police…
73,
Yan.
You certainly have a different perspective from your part of the world, Yan. Good point about ham operators in poor countries – they themselves probably don’t fit that criteria. I have a hunch that most of the ops who have signals with poor characteristics (keying or audio) already know it and don’t care. By the end of the 10 QSOs I listened to of the chirpy station, he was certainly aware that he had a problem but kept right on CQing.
When I hear the odd station with a chirp it actually gets me thinking that it might be one of the last remaining “real” Hams. There was a time when many or most had to build their entire station from scratch often from salvaged equipment. Invariably these stations had a few shortcomings, drift, chirp or some other problem.
Today with commercial equipment it is very rare to hear chirp or anything other than a T9 note.
Obviously this is what we should strive for, but one cannot help but wonder if we are not missing out on a very rewarding aspect i.e. home brew in our hobby?
I honestly think it is time we scrap the RS(T) system, it has become virtually meaningless. If we have to exchange some report, then possibly use only the Readability portion of the RS(T) nothing else.
Great blog ….
Pierre ZS6A
Thanks Pierre,
He may have had a homebrew rig but my guess is a power supply too weak for the load – and that may well be the fault of the commercial AC supply. Chirps are indeed rare today…30 years ago you could almost bet a chirping rig was homebrew and could therefore admire the fact that there was a real ham at the key.
I will send a C if a cw signal has a very evident chirp. I would want the same. That chirp can often appear in home-brew transmitters and old rigs. I sort of like a minor chirp based on comments written by the first commentor. I will never cut short a QSO with a “chirpy” signal.
I’ve been told by some that my QRP+ has a slight chirp on 20m – others tell me they can’t here it. It does often lead to QSOs about interesting rigs.
I’m with the group on this..
I’d say USUALLY when I hear that unique tone I especially work them since I figure they are either Home Brew
or using vintage gear.
Yes, I guess the power supply might be at fault or some other
missing regulation, but all the same if I can copy and the tone is vintage, its nice to ignore the slight fault, if it is slight and not obnoxious and obviously just plain bad and wrong, and enjoy the old Heath or EFJ Johnston etc on the other side. Or better yet, a one tube xmtr with a regen rcvr (now HE is really doing the work…. I worked a station like that 2 weekends back)