08 August 2008

WANTING TO JOIN IN ?

Old hams in Malaysia would say "Break" when he wanted to join in. I remember 9M2EG would mention "BREAKER..." before he came in. Today several new hams are saying "contact...contact..". The later is a popular term used by the Indonesian pirates and emulated by 9W2s.

From experience to mention a full callsign seems to be better. It distinguishes between pirate and non-pirate and the station is recognized straight away. The Indonesians like to mention only a part of the callsign like "YC" to break in. This practice is picked up from the pile up. It has to be asked again ,"QRZ ? "

The main problem is the new Malaysian hams were never SWLs. Almost all become ham straight away. There were no experience of keeping logbook, sending QSL cards and of course monitoring stations on HF.

So far calls for emergency on ham band is almost nill in these few years. And emergency station has never been heard to mention "contact..contact"

SOS sent on CW has been the SOS tone character. On phone is the "Mayday". I asked one ham why he picked up the "contact..contact" station. He said it could be an emergency station.

If a Malaysian ham were at sea and his boat is about to sink, it is better to mention "Mayday..mayday" than "contact...contact...". Even a simple "HELP' would call for immediate attention.

Malaysian hams who want to join in a conversation is advised to mentioned his callsign between pause. On the other hand the person who is speaking should not continue to talk on end without releasing the PTT. It is a good practice to release PTT when not talking and press again to talk. 9M2MGL and 9M2AGC has been known to be able to response when he is called while talking.

Once you are in, stay there for a while, not just one over and go away. If the one over QSO is made once or twice it might be accepted but if it is habitual then the others might feel uncomfortable the next time he joins in.

Once again I would like to say that if someone is using a frequency, DO NOT CALL CQ just because we have been using the frequency before.

Source: 9M2AR website