Recently, on one of the email reflectors associated with repeater owners, someone asked how to deal with kerchunkers on the repeater. The term kerchunk means to key up the repeater to see if it is there. It just takes a quick push of the Push-to-Talk (PTT) button on the transceiver to bring up most repeaters, resulting in a kerchunk sound.
It seems that this repeater owner had someone that was kerchunking his repeater on a regular basis and it was making him looney. This led to the usual discussion of whether kerchunking is acceptable, legal or moral and whether it should or should not be considered a capital offense.
Clearly, some radio amateurs have not been schooled in the proper way to kerchunk a repeater. The proper method for kerchunking is to key the transmitter and say your callsign, followed by the word “kerchunking”. This simultaneously identifies your station and indicates the purpose of your transmission.
To make the practice of repeater kerchunking even more efficient, I am proposing the adoption of these new Q signals:
QKC: I am kerchunking the repeater
QKC?: Are you kerchunking the repeater?
Thank you for your attention to this important topic concerning good amateur practice.
73, Bob K0NR
