Friday, Dec. 17, 2010, 1 p.m. — I was sitting here at my computer desk listening to a lunchtime QSO on 40 meters when I heard two guys move on frequency — a busy frequency — and one started calling the other one. The new guys were about half a KC from the ongoing QSO. One of the newcomers told his friend to “drop down 3 or 4” kHz.
I decided to follow these two — which turned out to be an adventure of its own.
Ham A was on (let’s say) 7183 kHz and began calling his friend, Ham B. Ham B showed up on 7183.300 and answered him. The QSO that transpired turned from comedic to an Amateur Radio tragedy of sorts.
Ham A couldn’t figure out why Ham B sounded so dad-blamed awful! He asked Ham B to give him some chatter so he could use his notch filter to cut out some of the interference. Ham B obliged, then complained to Ham A during that transmission that his radio seemed to drift off frequency a lot.
Ham A asked his buddy to zero beat him and get on his frequency, which as Ham A noted, was a “dot-zero” frequency. I don’t know what kind of rig Ham B was using, but he didn’t know what zero beat meant, and never changed frequency. They carried on their QSO separated by 300 Hz the entire time, Ham A complaining on nearly every transmission how distorted Ham B sounded. In fact, if you took out all the complaining Ham A did about Ham B being off frequency, their QSO would have been about one-third as long!
Why didn’t Ham A simple move to Ham B’s frequency? It sounded like Ham B was a relative newcomer to HF and didn’t know what zero beat meant, nor did you know how to tune SSB signals too well. But Ham A was bound and determined to stay “on frequency” — that blasted “dot-zero.” Does it matter who moves to the other’s frequency? In the end, a QSO that should have been contained in a 3 kHz segment was a little bit wider because one ham didn’t know how to tune and one ham who wouldn’t tune to the other’s frequency. Sometimes our spot-on digital VFOs and “double-zero” indicators take all the fun out of radio (coming from someone whose first radio was marked off in 5 kHz segments!).