A CW friend of mine lives a few miles from my QTH and we talk
occasionally on a 2 meter repeater. We've known each other via
CW, mostly, for probably 20 years. The other night, I was
watching something on the history channel when the 3 to 4 minute
commercial bracket of advertisements came on. Turning down the
television sound, I turned up the radio just a few inches away
that is sitting on a bookshelves. I was listening to an American
guy in Honduras working Europeans on 40 meters when I heard the
station say he was getting to much QRM on the frequency and then
he sent the word up. I figured he meant for the Europeans to
start calling him up the band but after a minute or so, I realized
he was saying that he was moving up the band. I began slowly
tuning. When I got to 7020, I heard this super loud station. I
figured it was the U S pile up calling the guy in Honduras and
since the signal was like 30 over nine, it was probably a W6 or
something in the pile up trying to call the guy. As I centered
the signal in my CW filter pass band, I heard my own call sign
coming over the air. I said, "Hey, who is using my call?" Then I
thought maybe my keyboard, or the radio, had gotten bumped into a
memory that was the one which sends my call. Then I remembered
two things. My keyboard was not turned on and I didn't yet know
how to program a CW string into a radio memory. But there was my
call, big as life, super loud, coming over the receiver. Then my
friend gave his call sign and I started laughing. He was calling
me blind; knowing that I didn't have a key hooked up yet. I went
to the 2 meter rig and called him on the repeater we use. He was
laughing when he answered. Yes, he admitted, he was calling me
blind and figured if I ran across him, I'd get a big kick out of
his funny that he pulled on me.
Phil.
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