What a jerk I am

I've not been very active lately on the radio. For one, until today, the weather has been really nice here in North Carolina and I've tried to be outside as much as I can. For another, I'm happy to say that my work has picked back up and just when layoffs seemed inevitable, we suddenly find ourselves so busy that we're actually hiring!

But I've still found time to turn the rig on an hour or so each evening and tune around. I've been chasing Maldive Island and Seychelles. I've worked both before but haven't been able to sneak a QSL yet. Both have had really nice signals but the pileups have been very poorly behaved. In fact, good ol' K1ASS even made an appearance last evening. That brightened everyone's spirits, of course. Most times I turned off the radio or tuned away...just too frustrating to listen to the mess.

But this afternoon was a different story. Good signals again, fairly well behaved mobs...until...someone repeatedly kept calling directly on top of S79GM's frequency even though he was working "up". Now that wasn't anything new, it was happening all the time, with the obligatory response from the traffic cops. But this fellow just wasn't taking the hint. He kept on and kept on.

Some posts started appearing on the DX spotting networks. Still, he kept on.

Just as I was about to curse out loud and see if the guy had an email address listed on QRZ, I saw something on his profile that made me stop in my tracks. "Deaf CW operator".

Oh man, what am I doing? Yeah, it's still a pain to have to listen through him calling, but it sort of put things in a different perspective. Here's a hobby where listening is 99% of the game and this guy can't hear a thing. Yet he's able to participate. OK, so he wasn't where he needed to be, but in my haste I had gotten all worked up. If QRZ wasn't around I would have no way of knowing that the man is deaf and I might've sent some foolish email chastising him for poor operating.

Makes me realize that, number one, I have no business doing something like that. It's not my place and I'm glad I glanced at his profile before sending something stupid and that I'd regret. Number two, sometimes things aren't exactly as they seem and I need to not get so worked up in the first place over something that's out of my control. And, number three, even though I was still able to work the stations I was after just a couple of minutes later, it didn't seem nearly as important anymore.

The return of K1ASS

We can thank our lucky stars, K1ASS made another appearance recently. This time he appeared on 20 meters and proceeded to block out VE2JCW for about 15 minutes. You can read about his previous exploits in an earlier entry I made here. It seems that the identity of K1ASS "might" be gleaned from the DX spotting information, although one should note that it certainly could be someone masquerading as that person.

I guess.

On the other hand, it might be safe to assume that there is some sort of link given the actions of some people and past history. Considering that this spot appeared and then K1ASS began his tirade on the air, then perhaps there's more than meets the eye. Not that the comment isn't enough.

It seems unbelievable that as many hams as there are in the US that there's a very small handful of clowns who constantly create such a ruckus. Since then, I've heard him (K1ASS) on twice, but both stays were either brief or maybe I only caught the "tailend" of his antics (bad pun). If it all boiled down to a couple of youngsters pulling a poorly conceived prank then it might be easier to understand. But since it's probably adults, it's hard to look the other way.

I wonder, what causes someone to get this far out of whack? Surely something awful must have happened in this guy's past to have caused him to act out so childishly. But if there's one thing that I've learned, there's no reasoning with people like this. Confrontation is pointless and simply fuels their fires. These guys are pros at what they do and whenever I've heard someone try and call them to task on the air, they eat them alive. They live for those moments.

Still, it's easy to understand how some people can lose their cool, despite their best efforts to let it go. If you listen too long you get drawn up into it, I guess. Clearly the best recommendation is to avoid it, tune away. But sometimes it's impossible because the station you really want to work is the one they're harassing and blocking.

Do you think we'd recognize these guys as "odd" if we were to see them out in public? Or would they just fit in with everyone else and they just turn into lunatics when they're on the air? I know this, I'd hate to have one as a neighbor.