> From: "Bernie Doran" <qedconsulta...@embarqmail.com> > what is this fascination with 3880 to 3885? last evening my s meter did > not > fall below +20 tuning through that area and each side. there is no > possible > way to have a QSO at times like that unless you are talking to your next > door neighbor! Of course maybe it is just that no one wants to talk to > me!! I have also been listening and calling on 7160 and 7290 for several > days without a nibble. Just about ready to throw in the towel and get > rid > of my junk. Bernie
I got on the air later in the evening, about 11 PM local time, and had a good QSO on 3885 with no QRM, SSB or otherwise. The QSO outlasted me, and I consider myself a night-owl. I have found it easy to operate "down below" during the autumn/winter months when the QRN is low, but during static season, activity drops off, and usually about the only activity I can find is up in the Ghetto. When condx improve, I find the Ghetto too crowded, not only with SSB QRM, but with AM stations, and any QSO established very quickly accumulates 5, 6, 7 or more stations and I don't care for large groups, so I find that the ideal time to QSY down lower in the band. >I gave up and went to 3705, called cq for 30 minutes untill > dave w9ad ran across me. My solution to that was to build my automated CQ caller. I just turn it on, the recorded CQ is transmitted, and after the initial call it automatically stands by for 30 seconds and then transmits another CQ, until I manually take control of the station. That way I con work on a project at the bench, read something, or round up my tools and tidy up the shack while the CQ is running. If, during one of the stand-by periods, I hear someone come back, I run over and take manual control of the station and reply to the CQ. That way, I am not wasting a half hour or more sitting at the rig calling CQ before I can contact someone when the band is sparsely populated. >I could find only three or four ssb stations > between 3.6 and 3.7. the low end is almost not used, if it is not going > to > be used the band might as well be changed back where it was. Well, from what I have read on some of the CW mailing lists, they are trying to gather support for a petition to the FCC to do just that. They feel that a big hunk of the "cw band" was stolen from them. Their justification for changing it back is that phone stations are rarely using the segment from 3600 to about 3680, so it should be "returned" to CW. But in rebuttal, I would point out that the CW ops have not lost any frequencies. It is still perfectly legal to operate CW on 3600-3700, so if they find that segment devoid of phone activity, there is no reason why they can't operate CW there, just as they did befor the phone band expansion. But most of the time, unless there is a QRMtest going on, there is plenty of empty space between 3500 and 3600 as well. And I can't see altering the band allocations just to accommodate QRMtests that might occur a few weekend nights a year. But they do bring up a point. When the band was first expanded, there was a big scramble to get on the air on the "new" frequencies, and there was loads of AM activity down in the lower part of the band. People were ecstatically commenting on how much better it was down there, away from all the QRM and chaos up in the Ghetto. But as weeks passed, the activity down below gradually dwindled, and one by one, stations migrated back up to the old frequencies, until it became somewhat of a rarity to hear any AM below 3875, and particularly, below 3600. The SSB activity on 3600-3700 has fallen off as well. At one time the entire CW band from 3500 to 3750, past the old Novice band, was as congested with CW activity as 3500-3580 is now. But just before the change, 3600-3700 was almost always empty of signals, except for a few early evening traffic nets and a few RTTY/data signals. That was one reason the FCC reallocated the frequencies. Use it or lose it. If we don't start using those frequencies, next thing we know amateurs will be kicked off part of the band and we'll be listening to Brother Stair on those frequencies. >And yes, I > know this has been brought up before, and yes I know there are generals, > not > an excuse for most, a few hours with the license manual and you are an > extra. I talked with a 13 year girl a while back that was an extra!! That brings out the point that the situation on the bottom end of the phone band is more a matter of Incentive Licensing and licence class sub-subbands, than phone vs CW/data allocations. > I will be back on the low end tonight around 3.7 +or -15, maybe I can get > a > ssb to respond. Try calling CQ-AM. You might be surprised how many SSB'ers will try out their ricebox appliances on AM for the first time. Once in a great while, someone will like AM well enough to want to try it again, and eventually end up setting up a "real" AM station of their own. There are at least a couple of regular AM'ers on the band to-day a result of CQ's that I called on the low end since the band change. Also, most of the SSB below 3600 is between 3675 and 3700, while 3600-3675 may be completely empty. We should make an effort to populate that portion of the band with a few AM signals. > From: "Edward Swynar" <gswy...@durham.net> > I sorta hung up my Viking II & RCA AR-88LF combo into retirement mode up > on > the shelf here several years back for the very reason you mentioned about > 40-meters... > > I'd call & call CQ at various hours of the day with no responses > whatsoever. > So I finally stopped trying. > > As for 75-meters, well, I guess some old habits are slow to die...but from > what I've been hearing up & around the "window" of 3800-3885-KHz, more > than > a few of the regular AM denizens seem to actually enjoy the challenges of > standing-up to the random (and by times, downright vicious!) heckling from > a > few of the more "expressive" within the SSB crowd... STRAP SOFTLY AND TURN UP THE WICK! > NOT the sort of place you'd really want to demonstrate the joys & > pleasures > of AM phone, to visitors in the shack! > > The part of the band around 3.7-MHz seems far more civilized. I enjoy > SWL'ing the gentlemen who come down there for some interesting technical > QSOs on AM... > > ~73~ Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ Plus, there are the Europeans who operate on 3705. I heard some activity last night, but I am locate just a little too far in the hinterlands to work the usual European AM'ers. The guys on the east coast seem to do much better. But if everyone just listens for AM activity in that part of the band but no-one transmits, then there will be "no" AM activity heard. Don k4kyv _______________________________________________________________ This message was typed using the DVORAK keyboard layout. http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/ http://gigliwood.com/abcd/ ______________________________________________________________ Our Main Website: http://www.amfone.net AMRadio mailing list Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/amradio@mailman.qth.net/ List Rules (must read!): http://w5ami.net/amradiofaq.html List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Post: AMRadio@mailman.qth.net To unsubscribe, send an email to amradio-requ...@mailman.qth.net with the word unsubscribe in the message body. This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
