Last week one of our most active activators found it necessary to cut short his activation in the UK due poor operating by some chasers. Here you will read his account of events and please feel free to add your comments to the discussion at the end of the article:
” Hi all,
Last weekend I was in England to activate 2 nature reserves. Stodmarsh was on the programme for Saturday morning. Very nice nature reserve, well looked after and worth a visit. So far for the good news.
I was very disappointed by the behaviour of the chasers today. It was so bad the I decided to close down after just under 1 hour in which I managed to complete almost 100 contacts. But the patience of some chasers was non existant. Having to work by numbers because of the big pile-up and even then some people did not agree that they had to wait.
When I asked stations with “5” in the callsign and a 9A5 came back someone told him that his call was not valid. Another station worked me from a clubstation with”0” in the call when I called that number. He then asked me for a contact with his home call. Again heavy protest. The protest lasted 30 sec. the QSO 5 sec. So, the moaner prevented me from making 5 further QSO with other stations. It is this kind of behaviour that puts activators off going to WFF’s.
It went from bad to worse with people wanting their number to be called. Then I decided to stop the activation. I still have not sent in the log from this activation and don’t know if I will. This not fun anymore. Therefore I did not do the Sunday activation either.
The chasers should realise that a lot of preparing and money goes into an activation abroad. In my case: ferry crossing, hotel, fuel expenses, mails in which you have to ask permission to activate a WFF. Personally I don’t know if I will continue with WFF, I’ll have to sleep on it. I have now done 50 WFF’s and have seen it deteriorate to very bad behaviour. It is still a hobby and meant to be fun.
In the last year I was fortunate to visit some beautiful reserves and combine this with ham radio; ideal combination, but at the moment I am not completely convinced anymore.
73, Peter ”
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