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Contesting Online Speak Out


Speak Out: Lighten up guys!

A reader asks, "What was the biggest or funniest mistake you made on the air in a contest? How about off the air?"

37 opinions on this subject. Enter your opinion at the bottom of this page.
[Speak Out Home Page]


Opinions...

Page 1 -->

aa7ya on 2002-11-19
One off air and one on air mistake....

The off air mistake is obvious to many. After an 18 hour CW shift, working my first ARRL Field Day event in 1995, I was still working QSO's in my head on the way home, and when I flopped into bed, as I didn't get any sleep for 3 days.

Now the on air mistake happend this year during the ARRL SSB Sweepstakes. During an exchange the lead on my pencil to jot down the other guy's exchange broke. I put the pencil in the Mr. Sharpie pencil sharpener and sent my exchange to myself without keying the microphone, even though I was holding the microphone up to my mouth.....

On second thought, I don't have any on air mistakes. :-)

Anonymous on 2002-10-31

Anonymous on 2002-10-30

Anonymous on 2002-10-30

Anonymous on 2002-10-30

Anonymous on 2002-10-29

wd8x on 2002-10-29

wd8x on 2002-10-29
A few years back I lived in Geneva Switzerland. Having only been recently licensed at the time in the US, I was given the call HB9ICE. Very nice call indeed but as I said, I was new. My first opportunity to operate was the CQWWSSB 96' contest and I did it from a beautiful mountaintop as a portable station. Since I could not modify my company car to mount an antenna, I made an antenna mount out of some sheet metal from our factory weld shop for my outbacker antenna. It worked great only when it sat on top of my new Opel Astra. My first mistake was operating out of band on 40m (they work only 7.05-7.10 on phone) for some stateside contacts (split? whats that?).At the end of the day of quite a lot of operating I started on my way back down the mountain only to realize I forgot the antenna. The FM radio was too loud for me to hear the antenna fall off the roof and scrape along the ground and the base mount scratching the heck out of the paint job. I lost the tip of the antenna and had a heck of a time explaining the scratches on the roof and door to my boss.

My most embarrasing, though was working at the 4U1ITU station in Geneva. The ITU station has EXTREMELY high expectations for their op's. One must be experienced in the finest aspects of station operations as well as being an EXEMPLARY operator(did I say I was new?). Any time I turned on the rig and threw out the call there was an instant pile-up. Not what I'm used to. I made the mistake of saying QSL via the buro or my home call KG8XQ. Big mistake in Swiss protocol and I found out quickly from the ITU manager who came upstairs to find me running a paper log instead of the computer log and eating a snack in a 'no food zone' shack. I was afraid to go back to the station for two weeks I was so embarrased. BTW, I still get QSL cards from the Buro for contacts that day from the ITU.

Anonymous on 2002-09-03
OZ5W/P and OZ3SDL/P was running two different contests at the same time and from the same station. The memory keyer was programmed with the two calls and we called CQ on a dead 50 MHz band alternating the calls for some time. Then suddenly we got an answer - but we did not remember what buttom we pressed last. So we had to send: UR 5NN PLS REPEATE MY CALLSIGN ! The story is true: "Please repeate my callsign" 73, OZ1RH.

Anonymous on 2002-05-06
A strong JA was running on 20meters at about 40 hours into the contest. I worked him, and immediately after my QSO, I heard "Kilo 7 .. woops!" I'm guessing that the K7 had entered the JA callsign, discovered it was a dupe, and terminated abruptly. The JA dutifully sent "kilo 7 woops you're 59 25" ... no response ... "kilo 7 woops 59 25" no response. I wonder what the JA had typed into his callsign field!?

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