Deliberate QRM or just not hearing me?
I was minding my own business last night working a bit of 20m RTTY. Conditions weren’t great and the band wasn’t particularly busy but there were a few stations in QSO as I tuned across the RTTY sub-band between 14.080 and 14.100MHz, all of them within Europe.
I found myself what appeared to be a clear spot up around 14.092MHz and sent the usual ‘QRL QRL ??? DE G0RIF BK‘ a time or three to see if anyone was using the frequency. On getting no reply I set about calling CQ to see who I could work.
I worked a few stations and had just cleared the last of those when I saw in the decode window ‘DE RA1DIO RA1DIO RA1DIO PSE K‘ (NB: RA1DIO is not the actual callsign of the Russian station in question). As this was spot-on my calling frequency I took this to be a tail end call so I sent a quick RST/NAME/QTH transmission and waited for his reply…which never came.
Instead he starts calling CQ on my frequency. Not close to it but right on top of my frequency. Now I’m prepared to accept that this may be a simple coincidence where I just got unlucky but given the band wasn’t busy it’s a bit odd that he chose my EXACT frequency. I also don’t buy that he couldn’t hear me because he was very loud with me (59+20dB) and I’d been working into continental Europe in the preceding half hour with no problems with the EU stations hearing or copying me.
I’m convinced this was just malicious, deliberate, QRM from the Russian station. It’s also not the first time I’ve had someone reply to a CQ call only to vanish into thin air as soon as I reply to them.
I think some ops just reply to CQ calls with no interest in a QSO, rather they just want to see how well they’re getting out or to check propagation and your responding to them just confirms to them that they are getting out and that a path exists.
Well that’s my view. I wonder who else sees this kind of thing and has similar, or different views.
It is good to see someone QRL when using digi mode!
Well, sometimes I think some ops transmit blindly, I have been in QSO with a DX station, and had some op transmit on-top with no care in the world.
Are you going to be doing any of the RTTY contests this weekend?
73
Hi Andre,
Re the contests this weekend, the likelihood is that I won’t get on the bands much. If I do it’ll likely be Sunday evening…maybe give away a few points.
73, Dean
Hi Dean,
DQRM is a major problem and is not an easy one to deal with. Last weekend i had a bad experience, let me explain…. It all started when 3C9B tried to work me. XXXXXX continually called on the same freq as me to make sure I was not able to get through despite the 3C op asking for everyone to stand by and only M0U to call.
The 3C9 op then gave up trying to work me. and returned to the XXXXXX putting him in the log, rewarding his bad behaviour, So I sent the XXXXXX an email saying that his behaviour was not acceptable of a radio amateur and asked him why he did it. Then this started almost immediately, deliberately jamming expedition freq on CW and RTTY using my callsign so you can imagine the amount of emails that have been heading my way.
I am sure he is a relatively new licensee too, I only find one log entry for him in over 400,000 that I am manager for.
No point in making things worse so I will just carry on ignoring his behaviour.
On Saturday afternoon he saw me spotted working JA on 10m so he then spent 1 hour jamming me. I just ignored that too, so he continued to jam the DXpeds with my call.
So even when I know 100% exactly who the culprit was, there is absolutely nothing that you can do! But you can be sure, his cards are maked!
@ Tim, That is bloody awful. Can’t you report him for abuse to his radio communications regulator or authority?
I must admit I have witnessed such activity, however, as I am a little pistol I just QSY and try and forget about the DX. It is those people that make radio no fun for all of us.
73, André
I agree with Andre, that’s terrible! Is it a DX station using your callsign to QRM people…or a UK station?
Unfortunately it seems these people are all too infrequently not brought to book. I’m sure you’ll remember the Italian station who used to park on 14.195 and play his recorded musings…or just argue with people as to his right to park on that frequency if he chose to…even if there was a DXpedition who might make better use of it. Even though most people knew exactly who he was he seemed to get away with it for ages. I don’t recall hearing him recently though so maybe someone ‘leant’ on him!
I hope this is soon a thing of the past for you Tim.
All the best,
Dean
Hi André et Dean,
Thanks for your comments, the abuser has been reported but in reality I doubt there is much that can be done. He is in Italy. An IV3 station.
I am dealing with the issue with DQRM guys that look into this type of behaviour.
It will not beat me i can tell you! As you say, just spin the dial & move on to the next station. The problem is with the guys he is DQRMing.
Dean - How are you doing with 3C0C ? This one has been good for me with 3 slots on 15, 17, and 20m so far all SSB.
Tim, I’ve not heard either of the 3C stations yet despite seeing them on the cluster quite a bit. I’ll hope to grab 3C0C before the 20th though. Due south is a good direction for me so fingers crossed!
I did get my YI9PSE QSL card today though…which is nice.
Tim, I listened in and heard 3C0C on 20m CW last night - what a ZOO. One poster on the cluster called it an ‘idiots conference’. Those poor guys down on Annabon must wonder why they’ve bothered!