I'm not a contester so like to sit back and listen and work stations 
just to see where propagation is coming from and see if I can hit them. 
It always makes me chuckle when a station is responding to a call and 
says, "you're 5-9 and could you repeat your call? Makes me wonder, what 
does 5-9 mean in a pile-up or contest, anyway?
Phil Scovell wrote:
> I have gotten a kick out of all the automated reply/exchange information 
> from some contesters I am hearing this time.  Even the QSO number some guys 
> have automated, which is supposed to, of course, shorten the time of 
> exchange rate to speed up your contact ratio per hour.  Nearly every station 
> I heard with this recorded, digitized, and automated response transmission, 
> were doing things like, repeating the stations call they were replying to, 
> once, and then punching up the auto responder and it would repeat, 
> phonetically the same call sign.  That means, therefore, they were literally 
> repeating the call sign of the contact station twice.  One guy who was doing 
> this also, once he punched up his digital recorder built into his radio, was 
> saying the exchange information and then saying his state by pronouncing it 
> and then saying the two letter phonetics as well.  For example his exchange 
> would go something like this.  W A 0 O R O.  Now here is where the automated 
> digital response was punched up.  Whiskey alpha zero Oscar Romeo Oscar, 2 5 
> 4 Bravo kilowatt zero November X-ray 66 Colorado Charlie Oscar.  I heard 
> loads of activity this afternoon, Saturday, on 15 meters, nothing on ten 
> meters yet but maybe sometime Sunday, and 20 meters sounded really big time 
> open from coast to coast.  40 meters, later, was also wide open with lots of 
> big signals, and later this evening, 75 meters was rolling big time.  In all 
> the years I  have run phone contest, especially when I had a 4 element 20 
> meter beam, I never heard any contest, generally, above 14.300 except for 
> perhaps one or two stations.  This afternoon, I heard huge signals from 
> contesters right up to the 350 edge of the band so from 150 to 350, 20 
> meters was rolling wall to wall signals.  I heard some 160 meter signals but 
> they were weak and I don't believe they were contesting although I always 
> hear a handful of SS contesters on 160 this time of night trying to snag a 
> few new contacts.
>
> Phil.
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>
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