Q.R. Zed!

Expected world class ratpile followed by "XX1XX. PI3colo stand by.

Oh, goodie! I'm next! After this guy's call and signal report I'm gonna get this rare DX!

Only it never seems to be a quick in-and-out QSO. I always manage to get stuck behind some total windbag that has to tell the DX station about his rig, his son's rig, his antenna, what he ate for lunch, his prostate, the tree his antenna is tied to and the broken branch on it and then he has to introduce the DX station to every single electron that is involved in the transmission and what's for dinner and his grand daughter is growing boobs and what they are planning on doing next Thanksgiving and he just got a new pair of shoes....

These guys always end it with, "I know you got a lot of calls so I'll let you go..."

Of course by the time he's done and I get up to the plate the signal's starting to drop off and if I do make my QSO it's with a 2x2 and a bunch of shouting.

C'mon. Just get the call and signal report and get the hell off!

I hate that shit.

I was trying to make contact with a KC 135. The guy before me was telling the pilot about every plane that he'd ever flown on since the Wright brothers.

I could hear the signal slipping away with every model number. Of course Mr. Frequent Flier Miles was strong up until the end.

I actually did get the contact, kept it short and moved on.

Much to their credit, GOOD DXpedition operators cut these people off at the knees.



"Well ya know, I'm runnin' a....."

"Q.R. Zed."

I gripe about the 'It-Tah-Lee Zoo-Loos' periodically, the Italian idiots that could fuck up a free lunch by asking for change but those are the worst Italy has to offer.

However the Italians have some of the all time BEST operators out there. They know how to manage a pileup and do it damned well. A couple of those Italian DXpedition teams are just plain fantastic.

And lets not forget about the weather.  How hot it is or how cold it is or how much rain they have had or how much snow or how the wind wrecked his dipole so it's hanging by a thread now and he is so surprised he was able to make the contact.  Some of the DX ops will just QSY right in the middle of the dissertation which puts #2 back to #200 unless the DX op is good enough to remember him: "Stand by .. PI3colo you still there?"

I'm also starting to see a trend in the opposite direction from Special Event Stations.  They have a prepared spiel they give to each and every contact that turns a 5 second QSO into a 5 minute QSO.  "So here is the story of our Special Event Station just in case you missed it ....." (how could I POSSIBLY have missed it???)  I've given up on several after waiting for a while just because I got tired of hearing the story over and over and over.

I've noticed that one also.

One time when someone did that to me I reminded him he forgot to tell me about his prostate.

I finally got one one time after listening to the same story 2 dozen times, and just said "59 Tennessee and I got the story of your event.  73!"  Damn if he didn't go into it anyway.

There are a lot of people like that. They start to tell you something and you cut them off and say "I know. I'm the guy that told you about it in the first place."

Yet they will keep talking.

what freq are you hailing KC-135s on?

He was calling out on 20m, and I happened upon him as I was going through the band.

I seem to have the same luck with that too.

I have 1 kc135, and 3 barges on rivers. Two separate ones on the Ohio, and one on the Mississippi. The guy on the Mississippi was on the bridge, and blew the horn.

I've got a B-17, a couple of commercial airliners AND FiFi.

I caught FiFi when they had her up for a test flight over Oklahoma and have the card to prove it!

a Cuban ham was on yesterday.   The pileup was obnoxious so I spun the vfo.

The pile up string would go on forever as guys kept trying to be last to stand out.

An AF 135?

How does that work? They use the on board HF for ham shit while in the air??

A friend of mine was a machinist on a repair ship.   He totally broke regs and drilled a hole through the hull to slip a wire antenna to listen to swr in his shop.  At the end of the day or for inspections coming and he would thread a plug in the hole.


Edit, I am sure aircrew don’t drill holes through the hull of a pressurized plane.

I do not know. I talked to him for maybe two minutes, and he he was busy. It wasn't long after I started on HF and didn't know it wasn't a regular thing.

There's a commercial jet pilot that takes calls generally oon 17 meters.

I ASSUME he is using an airplane radio as I can't see him setting up a personal owned rig in a commercial airliner as I doubt the powers that be would OK it.

I've talked to commercial air liners. They use the on board HF.

I think talking to the MIR on I think 147.555 was the highlight. The best was listening to 143.625. It was the Russian downlink freq for whatever it was they do. The audio was amazingly clear. You could hear every creak and pop and noise in the place. It was really strange.

I have had voice QSO's with many commercial airline pilots that are using the onboard HF SSB equipment. Upper sideband only of course so they hang on the 20 meter and up frequencies. I once spoke to King Hussein who was flying his own plane into Washington DC while he was still out over the Atlantic ocean. Obviously that has been many years ago as he has been SK for some time now. Aeronautical mobiles are not that uncommon, if you have a few years under your belt, sooner or later you will hear and have your chance at a QSO.  Things to keep in mind, they will always be on USB since the radios don't do LSB, and they will always be on exact multiples of 1 Khz as the rigs don't have actual VFO's but are digital synthesized, and the audio will often have a "pinched" sound as they are usually using a type of noise canceling microphone or headset.

73  James K0UA

deleted double post

My dad said that the 130s and 135s he flew had DC to daylight capability. Allegedly one of his copilots was a ham and used to get bored sometimes and work whatever band was open.

EDIT:
Maybe it was just the EC135 that had the dc-daylight, and the 130s just had HF/VHF/UHF... I wish I could ask him.