The other night, I was scrolling around 40m when I came across a familiar YL voice that had quite the pile up going!  She was handling it like a pro, and why not?  It was Kay Craigie, N3KN, the ARRL President!

In case you haven’t heard… The ARRL Centennial QSO Party is a year-long operating event that celebrates hams making contacts.  Different stations provide operators with a range of contact points from 1 to 300.  An ARRL member is worth 1 point and the ARRL president is worth 300 points.  Needless to say, she was quite the contact to have in the log.

I had already logged a contact with Kay on 20 meters a couple of months earlier (which I would never brag about on the local reflector) so I sat back and listened for a while.  What I found was very interesting…  It wasn’t the typical pileup that you would normally expect for such a sought after contact.  The pile up was very organized and well within the code of conduct.  Operators were not calling out of turn and were giving complete call signs.  She was not even working split and was still able to he heard very easily.  Why was that?

If you want to hear my rant on “HF Manners”, check out an earlier blog that addresses this topic.  But again, what was totally strange about listening to this exchange between Kay and the rest of the  community, was the organization of the pile up.  Was it the skill of the operator?  Was it the fact that she is a YL?  Was it because she is the ARRL President?  Maybe it was a combination of all of the above.  In any event, it was nice to see, for a moment, some respect on the ham bands, even for such a sought after logbook entry.

I couldn’t resist to make the contact on a second band and I did just before the went QRT.

Happy DX’ing and good luck if you are participating in the ARRL Centennial QSO Party.

73….