On Tuesday 24 November 2009 21:45:18 DANNY DOUGLAS wrote:
> I have seen the same thing. One of the problems is that 20 and 15 are the
> two dx freqs in the daytime, where we might reasonably contact other scouts,
> in the rest of the world. I.E. That is the typical Scout hangout for
> contacts. Most activity is late morning/early afternoon, because of other
> activities, such as cooking, eating, and traveling. We must work around all
> other regular Scout activities, in order to get a few hours in, on the air.
>
> Its not only that, but many people work all week, and the weekends are their
> sole period of time for hamming. If they like to DX at all, they have but
> one choice: join in the contests. Many simply do no like that. Frankly, I
> am tired of seeing the suggestion of trying other bands. Maybe they have
> only one antenna, or have pretty much worked those bands out (if and when we
> get some sunspots), or its daytime and the low bands are not open, or night
> and the high bands are not open. To tell someone that if they don't like
> contest interference, to go someplace else just seems a bit much to me. Id
> tell the contesters to go someplace else: like a specific portion of each
> band, and stay there, and allow others to enjoy their hobby also. Harken
> back to the old Novice Roundup. It was only on the Novice bands, gave plenty
> of time and space to Novices and anyone else who wished to join them, and was
> a real training ground for CW ops. By the way, IT WAS TWO WEEKS LONG, and I
> do not remember anyone complaining about interference, except Novices whose
> crystals put them slap atop a foreign broadcast station, who was out of their
> own international assignment areas (lots of those - Radio Moscow, Chinese
> broadcaster, Radio Tirana, etc).
> Danny Douglas
> N7DC
>
>
>
>
I just got done with the November Sweepstakes PHONE weekend. My observa-
tions about this weekend that might pertain to the non-contesters.
The contest didn't start until 4pm EST which gave plenty of time to demonstr-
ate to others (not just scouts) what can be done on HF. After 4pm, forget
about trying to make a QSO for ragchew purposes.
I don't go 'camping' out on a frequency either like a LOT of stations did.
Also a LOT (95%) of those stations were camping out within a few KHz of
other stations and causing a LOT of interference to each other. Wether they
could hear each other or not, that is just not for me to do. There was PLENTY
of space to spread out between stations to avoid that. Plus the power some
where running, I personally didn't think they needed to run that much power
99% of the time.
As for the CW weekend, there was plenty of space to operate in especially
since most CW was done in the cw only portions of the bands. I didn't notice
any qrm to other stations for cw and it seemed like they went out of their
way to be considerate to others.
Here is a consideration that someone could PROPOSE to the major contest
sponsers:
=====
You can operate ONLY in the General portion of the bands for contests.
That would free up this much space for each band for those non-contesters:
80m - 200khz
40m - 50khz
20m - 75khz
15m - 75khz
160 and 10m would have to be a compromise. I would say:
160m - bottom 100khz of the band
10m - from 28.300 to 28.600MHz so as to include the Technician and Novice
classes.
IF I am correct, that would free up the PSK, SSTV, and RTTY suggested freque-
ncies from contest QRM and allow general qso's to be conducted during conte-
sts.
Does anyone want to propose this to the contest sponsors or is this something
that shouldn't even be suggested.
I am NOT an avid contester but I also do NOT like to do many long drawn out
ragchews either. If I want a ragchew, I will do that on six, two, or higher VHF
band since I will probably see these individuals at Dayton or a VHF+ conference
during the year. Plus I can cover out to about 400 miles on any VHF band up to
1296MHz on most days. VHF + microwaves is my prefered bands of operations.
These are my thoughts. Milelage may vary.
James W8ISS
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