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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