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Saturday, July 22, 2023

Stuff like this really toasts my marshmallows

 A Facebook friend posted this on his page:

And generally, it was received well. However, one Ham who shall remain un-named had to copy it onto his page, modify it and begin denigrating QRP. All "tongue-in-cheek", of course!

I got to read that tired old garbage about how QRP is not special and how ALL the hard work is done by the receiving station, yadda ...yadda....yadda. QRP doesn't involve any real skill, in fact it's "mousy". QRO is what real Hams do.

The thing that ticked me off is that this guy is a Ham with some semi-celebrity cred of sorts who has a regular column in a national publication. He's not an idiot and he should know better. And even if his comments were "tongue-in-cheek" other Hams were, of course, more than willing to play "Dog pile on the rabbit".

So when I called him out on it, I was told to "lighten up".

Many years ago, when I was in the photo retail game, I learned that if you wanted to sell a Nikon, you didn't tell the customer that his Minolta or Mamiya was a piece of crap, or was somehow inferior.  You just sold them on all the great features and quality that they would be purchasing.

From that I learned that in Amateur Radio you never publicly criticize or belittle what another person likes, no matter what you might personally think. You like QRO? Fine. You like FT8? Fine, You like contesting? Fine. I may or may not be into any of those things, but I will never try to convince you that what you like is wrong. (Unless, of course, it is illegal).

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

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