We CW "casual QSO" people do have trouble with RTTY people all over the place. Many times 30 meters no good for short path QSO's. We need to put pressure on FCC or whoever to allow CW on at leat a couple of the 60 meter "channels" setup for SSB only. Would be easy about 200 Hz lower than "supressed carrier" frequency and still be in the alloted "channel", and for the most part, not QRM SSB on same channel.
But then, too many "commissioners" and lower level people are NOT ENGINEERS! This would allow "casual CW" QSO's on a band that propagation would probably be possible for short path stuff when 30 meters is "tanked" for that. Thanks to the reduction of 80 from 3500-3600 instead of 3500-3700 the RTTY guys are in a quandry, NTS die hards in a quandry and CW people in a quandry! The "other" bands were more sensibly reduced....why didn't they follow the same pattern for 80 meters and the NTS+CW+NTS guys would still be where they were before basically! 80 meters has been terrible since the "change". For everyone except the "voice" guys who seldom use the 3.6-3.7 segment! 73, Sandy W5TVW ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Brown" <j...@audiosystemsgroup.com> To: "Elecraft Reflector" <elecraft@mailman.qth.net> Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 7:42 PM Subject: [Elecraft] Contesters and Band Conjestion > On Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:29:31 -0600, Tom wrote: > >>Yep, contests are much more important than gentlemen's agreements >>and courtesy these days. (IMHO) > > The reality of worldwide frequency allocations is that on some > bands, contesters MUST violate bandplans to work stations outside > their own country. On 40M, for example, JA stations have a rather > limited bandwidth to operate RTTY and it's pretty low on the band. > On 80M, RTTY cannot operate above 3600 kHz due to a rather dumb > error made by a low level FCC clerk who rewrote the ham Rules > several years ago. One of our club members, operating from Aruba > (in the Caribbean) made 409 contacts on 80M, 809 on 40M, 1,127 on > 20M, and 869 on 15M. This is in 24 hours of a 30 hour contest > period. That means there were at least that many active stations > that had to cram into the spectrum that the FCC gives us. There > are similar conflicts with SSB operation worldwide, especially on > 40M. Our club alone had 77 members on the air in the contest. > > There are MANY times when I can tune across 80M during hours of > darkness and hear NO signals at all. There are MANY times I can > tune across 40M and hear fewer than a dozen CW signals and half > that many PSK signals. On a non-contest weekend, perhaps twice > that number. Assuming two people per QSO, that means casual QSOs > are sharing a band with a FAR larger number of contesters. In > other words, casual operators are simply a few percent of the > total number of hams using the band. Heck -- a good contester can > easily run 50 QSOs per hour using a few hundred Hz bandwidth (if > he's got a K3) and the top contesters run at twice that rate. > > The good contesters I know all listen before transmitting, and ask > if the frequency is busy if they hear nothing. But band conditions > change, sometimes rather quickly. A station can be running on a > frequency for an hour, and conditions change so that you and he > are now hearing each other. No one is being discourteous, it's > just band conditions. Last week during Stew Perry, I'd been > running a frequency for a half hour, and was making Qs as far as > the east coast (I'm near SF). A W2 shows up, doesn't hear me (he > probably had a big noise level, or maybe was on a Beverage pointed > to EU), so no matter how many times I told him QRL, he ignored me. > Discourteous? Probably just his local noise. > > Note also that contests never use the WARC bands. 30M is a great > band for CW ragchewing, and I've never heard it crowded (except > when a couple of really rare DXpeditions are there at the same > time)! > > 73, > > Jim Brown K9YC > VP -- Northern California Contest Club > > > > _______________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net > You must be a subscriber to post to the list. > Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): > http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm > Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.3/1877 - Release Date: 1/5/2009 7:20 PM _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
