Making observations

Amateur radio is an environment for infinite possibilities. I've spoken about the way that contacts can happen, seemingly out of the blue, how propagation has so many variables it's hard to predict what will happen at any given moment. During a contest you might scan up and down the bands looking for an elusive multiplier, a contact that's worth extra points, or a missing DXCC country, in your quest to contact a hundred or more. It's easy to get swept away in the excitement and disappointment that comes with success and failure.

I'm mentioning this because it's pretty much how many people in our community go about their hobby, me included.

I've likened making a contact to fishing, taking your time to get the rhythm of the other station, understanding that there's a human at the other end. Taking stock of what they're hearing, which stations they're responding to, how they respond and if they give out hints about making a successful contact with them.

The other day I came across a request to decode some Morse on an image showing long and short lines joined together in some form to serve an artistic purpose. Others pointed out that this wasn't Morse. I took an extra moment to point out that Morse had four individual attributes. It has a dit, a dah, a spacing between the letters and a spacing between the words, and since this image didn't have that it couldn't be Morse code. A few days later it occurred to me that I hadn't been paying attention. Morse actually has five attributes, it also has a spacing between each tone. I updated my answer and began to think about this interaction.

It's not the first time that I've stopped to consider what's happening.

For example, if I change bands on FT8, a digital mode that is very helpful for determining current propagation, I have a look at the level of activity. I'm generally not in a hurry, so I tend to leave it on the same band for a while, sometimes an hour, sometimes less, sometimes more. If the band is in full flight with every slot filled, it's easy to tick the "CQ Only" box and hide all the noise, or rather extra messages that form the exchange, but sometimes that noise has a whole lot of interesting information.

You can determine if one of the stations calling CQ is actually answering anyone or if they're just an alligator, all mouth, no ears. You can see individual people attempting to get each other's attention, making a local or a long distance contact. You can type in an interesting grid locator that accompanies most CQ calls and see just how far it is from you and in which direction.

I will also point out that using FT8 to observe a so-called dead band can be just as illustrative. It allows you to see signals in the waterfall, it decodes things that are barely visible and it will give you a feel for how your station at that location on that band at that time is performing in real-time. For example, it showed me that the squelch on my radio was turned on and blocking any chance of receiving weak signals, something that I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't taken the time to observe.

Another example. During a contest I often take some time to listen to a pile-up that surrounds a massive station to see what stations I can hear, who is coming in strong and who is coming in weak. I keep a mental or actual note of what cracks the S-meter with an indication of signal strength and what only turns up as audio, perfectly readable, but not exciting the needle in any way. I might not speak with any of those stations, but I know that there are stations in a particular location that I can hear.

It's easy to get swept up in all this massive excitement that is our hobby, but sometimes it pays off to take a breath, to wait a moment, to take a look and have a listen to learn the lay of the land and understand what is happening and consider the implications. Within that moment of calm you might find an unexpected jewel in the rough. That's for example how I managed a contact with South Sudan several years ago during a massive pile-up in a club station during a contest.

I'd love to hear what you have stumbled upon serendipitously like that. You can always get in touch, cq@vk6flab.com is my address.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB