[amsat-bb] Why 6 digit grid locator in Europe?

[Peter Goodhall]

Ofcoms reasonably relaxed, its main concern is that I identify at the
start of a transmission (CQ) every 15mins or again if I change
frequency. IARU says that a valid QSO is defined as:-

- Mutually identified each other
- received a report and
- received confirmation of a successful identification & reception of the report

Report could easily just be the Gridsquare on its own, after all the
signal reports meaningless via a satellite if its FM (probably ssb
too) and you're getting into it thats all that matters, remove the
signal report and you speed up the QSO and that extra two letters
doesn't seem so bad.

When you think

EA4GPZ 2E0SQL
2E0SQL IN80do
EA4GPZ IO91js
and a quick Thanks/73

Probably isn't going to take that long.

But I honestly don't feel that because on EME or M/S its just 4
characters that it should mean a sudden switch, for EME/MS the 4
letters have been decided based mainly on the digital modes which has
moved into HF with JT65 and JT9 before then apart from in a PSK brag
file you never really heard QRAs on HF.

I'm not sure how long the 6 characters has been a thing on the
satellites in Europe, but in the 4 years I've been on it's certainly
the norm.. like you say tons of times wasted on for example SO-50
having to wait for someone to stop calling over you or keying you out
that its easily 50% of the time lost just to people probably not being
able to hear the satellite in the first place.

Just my thoughts anyway and many thanks for the squares while you've
been on from the UK.

Pete, 2E0SQL

On 18 February 2016 at 21:35, Dani EA4GPZ <daniel at destevez.net> wrote:
> El 18/02/16 a las 15:26, Peter Goodhall escribió:
>
>> We can strip down exchange information to just be 2E0SQL EA1JM IO91 or
>> if we don't bother even with that 2E0SQL EA1JM.. I'm not really sure
>> it constitutes a contact by my licence regulations.
>
> I don't think that the licence regulations have any say on what
> constitutes a contact or actually try say so. That's for the ham
> community to decide. I can speak only for the Spanish and UK
> regulations, which are the ones that I've ever read.
>
> The EME and meteor scatter communities have a very clear idea of what
> constitutes a contact for them, because they're only always working
> under marginal conditions, so they try to send the least information
> possible.
>
>
>> There's far greater issues like people calling over the top of in
>> progress QSOs, deliberate jamming etc which should be dealt with
>> first, if this was taken care of then more QSOs on FM satellites could
>> take place and that extra two letters wouldn't really make a real
>> difference.
>
> I agree with that. For me, the worst problem in FM satellites is people
> calling over and over without being able to hear the satellite. It would
> be fun to record some passes and study how much time gets wasted with
> such issues and how much time is used to actually make QSOs. I have the
> impression that more than half of the time gets wasted usually.
>
> 73,
>
> Dani EA4GPZ.
>
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-- 
Peter Goodhall, 2E0SQL