Friday, December 25, 2009

An Age-old Question About DX Stations.

    If someone in the ham radio community can answer this question, please do so and send me an e-mail at the following address: aa9uf.gercken@gmail.com. I would like to know why DX stations (stations outside the U.S.) rarely engage in regular conversations on the radio. I could probably count only a handful of times when a DX station gave me more than a signal report, name and QTH before they went away. What is it they are afraid of? Big Brother listening? Saying the wrong thing? Are they so inundated with calls from other hams when they get on the air that they can't handle the pressure to respond to them all? Are they so afraid that propagation conditions are going to change and signals will fade out that they don't want to be on the air any more than necessary? What is it???
     I thought we were supposed to communicate with each other. A "Hi and bye" contact is not a QSO in my opinion. They may as well not waste their time if that is all they are going to do.  Why did they bother to spend all that money and go thru all that work of setting up a station?  Communication is the exchange of ideas and thoughts and common interests. Where is the communication in a "Hi and Bye" contact? Sometimes I don't even get the chance to tell them what kind of station equipment I am operating before the DX station signs off.
     To make matters worse, I am now seeing stateside operators doing the same thing!  Are you kidding me?  Well, I am not putting up with that nonsense.  If they call me, I have a macro that says "no hit and run contacts, please." They usually comply, but if they don't, I will not QSL them.
     I have asked the above questions in letters to the editor in World Radio and QST but nobody has any kind of answer for me. If you have some insight, please let me know.

73,

John, AA9UF

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