ButtFuzz
Anti-BS Advocate ● WO0WOO ● Reverend Doctor
Most "ham" rigs, without a lot of trouble, just do not sound "good" on AM, IMHO.
SSB is another story.
SSB is another story.
Some may Brag on bootlegging on the Amateur Bands, but it doesn't take long to figure them out.
Today's INSTANT access to every callsign database on-line, makes it tough to get by.
Many groups will have someone on board who when a callsign is given that is not normally part of the group, will instantly look-it up on one or several of the databases and check the validity of the callsign.
Then the're are some obvious give away's...someone trying to join a phone conversation by saying CQ or QSK or comment...etc... are almost always dead give-away's!
(by US rules those are unidentified transmissions)...
I normally will respond, "what's the callsign"...if not given they will be ignored!
The chronic Qsl'ers...... "What's your personal".
Now granted old habit's die hard and some new legitimate op's will use these terms, and to a point with many groups I frequent, we will make allowances in this regard for a time.
However if it continues over the course of a few days or weeks one joins a group in conversation, someone(not normally me) will call them out on it.
Now that's not to say we don't welcome new op's...To contrary, we welcome them daily!...
Most op's just expect over time that these old habit's, by listening and chatting with a given group tend to fade away gracefully.
I have caught a few over the years using the're Father's/Uncle's etc...callsign that may not be active on the air presently but when checked and find out that callsign has been assigned 50 years ago...it is not tough to figure out it does not belong to whom is using it.
So just a head's up if your so inclined to try and bootleg on 75/40 and 20m you most generally will be found out quickly.
Many Stateside op's and Dx'ers worldwide will instantly plug a given callsign in the logging program tied to the many databases before they even respond to a call.
All the Best
Gary
Most "ham" rigs, without a lot of trouble, just do not sound "good" on AM, IMHO.
SSB is another story.
Hello All: Back I the 1980's I had a good friend who worked for Yaesu Radio in Los Angles some were. He said that they believed that 30 percent of their HF Radios went to other than the Ham Radio Market. A large majority of the 30% of radios going to the CB Single Side Band crowd.
As we all know these Yaesu HF Radios having better receivers and a 100 watts with a speech processor you normally didn't need a linear amplifier to talk all over. And there were CB SSB type clubs all over and it was very enjoyable to join in all the people on the CB SSB channels. Being able to have a high quality crystal filters in the radios with a Attenuator and a Beam Antenna, allowed you be able to reduce normal skip noise to a acceptable level, while being able to listen to the locals bad mouth you. And the normal bleed over from local stations was significantly reduced.
The VFO controlled Ham Radios allowed you to tune all over the bands, and get to listen in on the Ham crowd, and using these Ham HF Radios induced many a CB'er to get his Ham License. These Ham HF radios also allowed one to tune below and above the CB Bands hearing the locals on their "secret pirate channel" frequency that nobody else could go to, or so they thought, very entraining tho.
Jay in the Great Mojave Desert
............. I remember when I was stationed in Africa seeing locals sporting older ham equipment to use for local communications.
Unit 997 on the the big snake 2000 flatside at 90 feet coming at ya break break break... I think I need a shower..lolNow all they need to do is make up a new Handle and some DX numbers. How cool is that ?
What are you going to do with all those feathers?w9c11 just got down