I am really enjoying operating AM on the new frequencies below 3750; in fact I have been inside the old "window" only once or twice since. It's great not to have QRM to each side and often right on the operating frequency, and to be able to open the receiver bandwidth up to 8 kHz or so and enjoy the quality of the AM station I am listening to, even during evening "prime time" hours.
I have noticed that the phone bands sound decidedly friendlier now that there is enough elbow room for everyone to spread out. I even hear SSB stations calling "CQ." Another thing I like is that there is now enough room to carry on several simultaneous AM QSO's, and not have just one or two big roundtables with 8-10 stations each. Whenever a QSO builds up to more than 4 stations, I tend to sign out and QSY somewhere else in the band. If no-one wants to follow me, I just call CQ and try to get another AM contact started. Besides keeping roundtables more reasonable in size, it makes for increased AM "presence" on the band. As for the CW community, the sky didn't fall, after all. I notice that on 3500-3600 stations are spaced a little closer together than they were before, when you sometimes had to tune 5 or 10 kHz between signals. Now, that segment sounds more like what it used to sound like during the 60's when the band was packed with CW signals from 3500 all the way through the novice band, but it is still not too congested for comfort, especially if one has an appropriate bandwidth CW filter available in the receiver. I work a little CW myself, and have found it more enjoyable to operate on both 80 and 40 since the changes. I actually believe on increased number of CW stations have become active on 80m to fill in the remaining CW subband. Perhaps this is a counter-reaction to the no-code decision? The only hassle I have run into since the expansion has been in the Extra Class segment, of all places! A couple of times a slopbucket group has pulled the usual old tactic of dropping right down less than 1 kHz from an existing AM QSO, ignoring the fact that the frequency was already long in use while there was plenty of vacant space to each side of the QSO, and then proceeding to piss/moan about the AM QRM. That has happened to me twice in the last few nights on the upper end of the Extra Class segment, and I also heard it happen to a QSO between Gary K4XK and Jim W5JO, most likely from the same SSB group. The last time it happened to me, I just continued to operate while ignoring the interference, and when I finally signed out, I listened for a few minutes, and the offending SSB stations openly acknowledged that they knew we were on frequency, as several members of their group mentioned that "the AM'ers are gone." Maybe we should let some tapes roll and send them to "you-know-who" and see if maybe those slopbuckets can have the honour of sharing the ARRL website with Ashtabula Bill, with their callsigns posted alongside W8VYZ. But other than that minor irritation, I've been having a great time on 80/75 since the expansion. I haven't even been on 160 except for a couple of times. Don k4kyv _______________________________________________________________ This message was typed using the DVORAK keyboard layout. http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/ http://gigliwood.com/abcd/ _______________________________________________ Amradio mailing list List Home: http://w5ami.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio_w5ami.net Partner Website: http://www.amfone.net Post: mailto:[email protected]
