No, you're not wrong. In my opinion, SSB stations should stay out of the
bottom 25 KCs, at a minimum, and above 50 KCs on 40 meters as a basic courtesy
-- especially to QRP enthusiasts. The same goes for RTTY in my view. And I
operate CW, SSB RTTY. This frequent downward move below 50 KCs is a
relatively recent development initiated by a handful of discourteous
operators, now adopted by a growing number of hams who lack, among other
things, operating skill.
73, Brad K4RT
-- Original Message --
Received: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 04:54:06 PM EST
From: Ron Notarius W3WN [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: DX Chat Reflector dx-chat@njdxa.org
Subject: [DX-CHAT] Off Base?
Bear with me a moment on this one, gang.
I know some of you are also on the CQ-Contest reflector, where I've been
involved the last few days (since the end of CQ WW) in a sometimes heated
discussion over operating practices on 40 meters.
The crux of the disagreement revolves around the actions of some SSB
stations regarding operating below 7020 kHz. Some of these are North
American stations (mainly some US big-guns) who announced they were
listening at 7012, 7010, 7007, even 7001 kHz; some of these are various DX
stations who were transmitting from the same region.
Now... I'm not trying to re-argue the situation here. Suffice to say, IMHO
this is poor operating practices to try and have an SSB contest effectively
control the entire 40 meter band (to say nothing of the long-term effect of
ticking off CW ops pushed out of the way and making them anti-contest).
I've had several counter-arguments, two amateurs (one US, one VE) in
particular. I'm being told things like the band is crowded so we go where
we have to, if it's not strictly illegal it's allowed, the contest
operators can't impose band limits, if the contest operators try to limit
things that aren't illegal they open themselves up to litigation,
non-contesters should use the WARC bands, a run frequency is more
important that a 5 WPM Extra talking across town, CW is dying anyway,
band plans are voluntary, and my personal favorites, it only happens two
weekends a year, CQ WW ARRL DX (what about CQ WPX and IARU and WAE and...)
so deal with it, and CW is being abandonded by administrations around the
world so nobody cares. Amongst many others, but you catch the drift.
I've also had a small group encourage me -- privately, few in public posts.
The vast majority? Silent.
So... am I wrong here?
Now granted, a big-gun I'm not and probably never will be, especially from
the new QTH (I'm just glad the vertical kinda WORKS right now! Well, it's
been 3 1/2 years since the last permanent QTH...). My operating time was
very limited due to family obligations. But I was just floored by some of
the 40 meter listening frequencies I saw on the cluster on Saturday night
(ET). And I heard a lot of CW activity that got squashed by people calling
or responding to a CQ CONTEST. So, I figured that there'd be some griping
about it. But only one person did (my participation started as part of the
response), and he quickly got told to go fishing if he didn't like it.
Am I off base in finding this situation unpalatable? Am I in the minority,
or are most just shrugging and putting up with this because they don't think
anything can be done?
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