Hello Charlie et al,
Yes, I invite "blind callers" for the following two reasons:
1. I need their calls to be decoded to populate the Q65 PILEUP ACTIVE
STATIONS LIST ("ASL") and provide the added sensitivity when it comes
time to participate in a contact exchange with them.
2. Due to the nature of Faraday Rotation on VHF EME, there may appear to
be "one way propagation" for extended periods of time. If people waited
until they copied me before calling, I may have lost the opportunity for
a complete Faraday Rotation cycle to receive them and add them to the
ASL. Since many of the callers are horizon-only stations utilizing
narrow ground gain antenna lobes, there are by nature very limited
windows during which to complete with them; having them delay the start
of the contact until they decode me further reduces the available time
for a contact exchange to take place.
I am sure you can appreciate the huge difference between this type of
weak signal contact and the essentially instantaneous strong signal
reciprocal contacts on HF using Fox/Hound or Superfox. On VHF EME, it
is quite an advantage to be able to determine which station(s) to engage
in a QSO that might be able to provide a quick reciprocal type of
contact. Currently, the only way to do this (without resorting to the
internet to have people report "I am decoding you now", which
essentially makes the contact invalid) is to try to work through the
pile of callers, replying to each in turn to see which ones may be
capable of completing a quick "reciprocal" type of contact with you.
Thanks to the ASL, it may be that some of the callers to whom you reply
may actually receive your message, although you won't know it until you
receive "RRR" from them at some later time. However, the best success
rates involve choosing the proper QSO partners with which you have the
highest probability of making a quick reciprocal contact thinning out
the number of callers.
It struck me that the Q65 PILEUP mode may finally actually provide the
means to transmit this information! I thought that there might be room
for this information the way the R report is inserted in TX3. I wonder
if the program could automatically send a message in place of TX2, but
similar to TX2 except with some other character (perhaps just a dash
instead of a space) to indicate that the station copied a yellow spike
during the receive cycle immediately preceding their transmit cycle.
This would be in place of TX2, and would revert to the standard TX2 if
no such yellow spike were received. It would not affect the AUTO
SEQUENCE of either station (other than the current action upon receipt
of a TX2 message) but would simply be displayed as a received message.
But it would be a sign to the DXpedition (or other) station to "please
select me next because I am copying your trace". I suspect that the
activation of this feature should be manually turned on by the callers,
although I guess it wouldn't hurt to have it running all the time
(unless it would add significant processing to the computers on one or
both ends).
Perhaps there are significant impediments that would make something like
this impractical. However, after hours of trying to answer callers one
at a time who don't copy at the time you tried them, I think it would be
a tremendous improvement if it were in any way possible!
Thank you for your kind consideration, and for the HUGE advance that Q65
PILEUP provides. It is already the standard on 6m EME! VY 73, Lance
On 19 Aug 2025 03:58, Jim Brown via wsjt-devel wrote:
On 8/18/2025 8:32 PM, Charles Suckling via wsjt-devel wrote:
It seems from your last point that you suffer a lot from 'blind
calling'. This was a real problem during the early days of Superfox
mode, and was overcome by code that prevents a 'hound' from
transmitting at all until they have managed to decode the signal from
the fox.
Hi Charles,
To understand Lance's request, you must understand his operating
conditions. He does 6M moon-bounce Dxpeditions to remote places, which
requires very low noise, high power, and big antennas. To minimize his
need for power, which translates to minimizing the cost of buying and
transporting fuel over oceans, and then to remote locations where
there's no noise, he INVITES blind callers. This is a method of
operation he devised years ago. He's currently somewhere in the South
Pacific, don't remember where.
This is his website. https://www.bigskyspaces.com/ Scroll down to
see his instructions to callers.
I would encourage the development team to take his request seriously
and do your best to accommodate it.
73, Jim K9YC
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URL: http://www.bigskyspaces.com/w7gj
Skype: lanceW7GJ
2m DXCC #11 - 6m DXCC #815 - FFMA #7
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