I agree. And while I have little or no interest in contesting, I can appreciate
it as being a big part of amateur radio and does have value in practice and
experience in understanding exchanges and band conditions/propagation. And for
a great many people, it's just plain old fun.
But, there's really no excuse for ops to just pop on a frequency that is in
use. What the 3 ops did on the net I was participating in last night was really
inexcusable.
I helped with a special event station yesterday and on ever qsy I first
listened and put out 3 calls asking if the freq was in use. This procedure took
about 1 minute of my time and I was assured that I was not interfering with a
qso in progress.
It's just common sense and common courtesy.
-Dave, KB3FXI
BTW, I find the CW contesters to be less likely to QRM. And if they do, it
really has no effect on most of the digital modes we use on our nets (Olivia
and MT63).
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "John Becker, WØJAB" <w0...@...> wrote:
>
> I'm not in anyway saying that what happened was OK but
> after all it was a contest. Not like it happens all the time.
>
> But look at the good side. Lucky it was not a CW contest.
>
> John, W0JAB
> Louisiana, Missouri
> EM49lk
>
> Pike county for the county hunters.
>
>
>
> At 10:56 AM 7/18/2010, you wrote:
> >I had 3 interruptions from 3 different stations during an Oliva 8/500 net
> >last night on 80m within about a 5 minutes timespan.
> >
> >And, BTW, I know for damn sure they could see and hear my signal as I
> >switched to RTTY at 50w on all stations and repeated "the frequency is in
> >use" until the moved.
> >
> >I don't think anyone should suggest limiting to contests to fixed
> >frequencies, but it damn sure would be nice if some of the mindless RTTY
> >contesters would start showing some common courtesy by listening a second or
> >two before stomping on QSO's in progress.
> >
> >-Dave, KB3FXI
>
