Not a Good One

Band conditions have been challenging over the past couple of days. Friday was reasonably good and I managed to log 7Z7AB IOTA AS-190 new one running QRP. Pileup was quite big since this IOTA group has never been activated before.

The Conway Reef exepdition team is on the way back home. Many stations are active from Fiji. Saturday morning brought a very nice surprise when conditions were really good between OH and Fiji on 20m band. Working 3D2GC with 5 watts proved to be quite a challenge but after an hour of finding the right spot in the pileup I managed to log him.

Good operators work small signals! Great ears and very nice CW (op. LZ1GC)!

5U6E Not A Good One

I worked 5U earlier on RTTY with QRO. Band conditions on 10 were not great, but the signal was coming S7 to my 4 el yagi. Not much happening on the bands, so I decided to try to hone my skills and try to get 5U to the log with 5 watts.
I spent more than hour in the pileup trying and trying, tanking my call with no success. The pileup was 7k wide and many south europeans going through. The signal started going down around 14:30z when the darkness started creeping in. The 10m closes quite rapidly up here at this time of the year so I knew I had less than 15 minutes left before the band would be dead.

5U has appeared on the bands quite sporadically, so this could be my last chance to work 5U this year on 10. I decided to switch on my small transistor linear giving 250w out and 3S-units boost to my signal.

He worked two stations before my call came back OH3T ?.
I sent my call once to confirm and his report with TU, expecting to get my 5NN report and TU. But no, all I got as return was TU 5U6E UP.

So, did I work him? Yes I did. Am I in his log? I am sure about that.
Did I get my report? No I did not.

So technically speaking this was not a good contact, since I do not have my report.

I am thinking two option why I did not get the 5NN.

1. Since working mostly QRP and with more or less standard 20WPM QRP speed my rig is in semi break in, with delay 600ms. So it is possible that he sent 5nn that I never heard.
2. More propable explanation is that he moved on to work the next station since he is expecting to hear his report AFTER he has sent mine. Now, instead of sending the report he send the question mark and since I was the wiseguy and sent his report before getting mine the protocol was broken.

But.. why the question mark and not 5NN in the first place?

A good practice is to send a report if you have something that resembles a call.
Not a question mark.