SSTV and Bad Behaviour

SSTV on 40m was interesting yesterday afternoon. 

A number of VK5s started sending images, and I decided to jump in. I've never worked a VK5 on SSTV before. Slap bang in the middle of the QSO, as soon as I'd finished sending, someone sends an image -  a picture I can't quite make out, with no call attached to it. As soon as we 73, a flood of images of motorbikes starts. No calls.

Eventually, a photoshopped picture of the Queen appears with middle fingers raised and a single message of "Wankers" appears. Later on a picture of Vladamir Putin raising a glass of bubbly appears. Classy. 

Some pictures then arrive - one of Scott Morrison with the text "We only shoot foreign FEMALE terrorists not domestic ones now" appears. Another later of a woman with the caption "Moo!".

In the middle of all of this, discussion on Facebook included one ham advising that another ham was using his call sign and sending inappropriate pictures, yet the sending HAM appears to have not removed his own call from the encoding in the picture. Such pictures included a half/half of Barry the shark above the picture of what appears to be a couple of chaps (possibly a woman... hard to tell) having a horizontal good time. 

Pretty poor form all around. Given that all of my SSTV content (much like a lot of peoples) is automatically saved and pushed out to the Internet, that gave me cause to go double check. I don't think I've received any explicit images as far as I can tell. 

I do frequently cull the SSTV images - MMSSTV is prone to saving images that are essentially just "snow", so I periodically cull and replace the entire gallery.  

Here's yesterdays received images:

 http://sstv.vk3acp.com/index.php?/category/SSTV/posted-monthly-list-2021-3-19

I've left the images that lacked callsigns - they're not terribly offensive (unless you're a staunch monarchist, in which case... sorry?). I don't care to over cull - if it's not just noise, and it's not something I care if my kids see, I'm inclined to keep it.

It is unfortunate to see some of this bad behaviour coming from other hams though. Hams pirating the calls of other hams and sending inappropriate material does nothing positive for amateur radio and does nothing more than bring the standard down to that of the wild west of CB. Unlike CBers - most of whom these days appear to be young people who just spend a small fortune decorating the bullbars on their Commodore utes with antennas, stickers and lights, all on the off chance that they might go bush bashing... or more likely... want to fit in at the Denni Ute Muster, amateur radio has a higher bar for entrance. Some effort and commitment is required to get licensed, and the community generally doesn't tolerate bad behaviour. 

There's been reports of loud mouthed, opinionated hams being abusive and generally unpleasant floating around the bands of late too. This kind of thing reminds me why I prefer digital modes. I don't need to talk to... or listen to.. these idiots. I don't have that much time for this hobby.. and less so once I go back to spending a significant chunk of my days back in an office leaving my radio time to being remote accessed digital modes. The time I do spend needs to be constructive. Yesterday was generally a good example of this - I've never managed to do SSTV with VK5 before, yet I managed 2 QSOs in a row and kept seeing their images for a while before they started fading. 

The purists I'm sure will argue the point and they're entitled to their opinion in the same way I'm entitled to mine. I managed to transmit a picture 800km away in a direction I rarely get heard via an old radio, a generic cheap Chinese tuner and a glorified piece of wire hanging between a couple of poles at 10w. I'm happy with that. I didn't have anything I particularly cared to say to anyone at the time anyway. 

My doing so does however support SSTV within amateur radio. Perhaps more regularity of SSTV might finally cause other hams to accept our existence and get them to give us a little more space around the generally accepted frequencies we use, instead of butting up either side of active periods then whinging incessantly about our signals interfering with theirs rather than just moving a couple of kHz either side. It's not like any of these bands are that saturated. I can't wait to upgrade my license. The IC706 Mk2G is good for 100w SSB on HF. All that whinging makes me long for being able to turn up the wick and make sure they have something to whinge about. 

Amateur radio works a lot better if everyone just keeps it civil and uses their brains. Keep the religion and politics out of it. Maybe temper their opinions understanding that much like rectums, we all have one.. and many are full of excrement, smell and are better left in our underwear. And maybe learn to adapt to the fact that there are digital modes that exist that have specific frequencies being used and perhaps it's best to give them a little space rather than steam rolling them, then whinging when someone finally appears with a signal that returns the favour.