Uh-oh — OO! Wow, this has been more fun that eBay — the gnashing of teeth and handwringing that's been going on the last few days on 75 meter phone. It turns out that several folks up and down the band — including several on a couple of my favorite nighttime frequencies — received cards from an ARRL Official Observer.
The offenses were mostly related to properly identification and some obscene or indecent language. The effect was interesting, as I heard roundtables buzzing about the notices up and down the band. I think I heard more discussion of the OO cards than I did the build-up to Sunday's Daytona 500 (what a race that was, particularly the final half of the race).
No one likes to get called for something they did wrong, but some of the hams I've heard who got cards are downright embarassing to call fellow hams. The OO is an idiot, I never do anything wrong was one ham's comments. Seems a kneejerk reaction is fairly common. Several I heard weren't upset, but simply weren't sure what exactly they said that earned their card. The OO didn't quote them, but paraphrased the comments. I suspect they all know what the OO is talking about.
None of the recipients have taken it as badly as a New Jersey ham who used to visit a nightime roundtable. He was a new ham who desperately wanted to be taken as an old timer; I had heard him deliberately mislead folks about how long he had his ticket; he would mention only that he had gotten his vanity call in 2004.
Anyway, this guy was a lout with a capital “L.” for lots of other reasons. But when he received an OO card (for an offense I've forgotten), he ranted for days about it. He would say the OOs name and curse him with every profanity in the book. At times the roundtable couldn't function because this guy simply held the key down and bitched long, windy tirades about the OO and the notice he didn't deserve. It wasn't his fault, the OO was an idiot.
That finally subsided, but his attitude about the OO was pretty much his attitude about anyone who disagreed with him on anything during a discussion. He was rude and obnoxious too — he was into hifi SSB, and he would simply key down and transmit “Test one, test one, AUDIO …. check check” and other things right ON TOP of an existing roundtable discussion, particularly if it was about something he didn't care about. The others in the roundtable complained, and he blew them off. Many from that roundtable took off to other frequencies, but have more recently returned. Seems our friend also blew off TVI complaints from his neighborhood, and he's essentially now off the air, at least on HF. At least he can't get anymore OO cards if he's QRT.
EBAY SCAM? I won an auction for a Les Logan Speed-X bug a couple of weeks ago, and had not heard a peep from the guy. I had paid via Paypal, so this weekend I started digging. Turns out my payment at PayPal was never claimed. In fact, PayPal indicates the guy is not even registered. Perhaps he set up the payment with an error in the e-mail that he used for the payment address? He had ZERO feedback, so yeah, it was a chance. If he was trying to run a scam, he's done a poor job of it since he couldn't receive the money. He did e-mail me with the shipping amount, so maybe he's just a newbie. Let's home that's it. I canceled the payment, so at least I'm not out anything. We'll see.