Just like to say sorry to anybody looking for me on 40m from Mendick Hill, GM/SS-195 yesterday. 40m was a complete zoo, tried several frequencies only to find by the end of my CQ there was a huge contest station calling away there and although I eventually found a “reasonably” clear frequency around 7.186 I couldn’t self spot and when nobody found me after 20 minutes calling I guessed my 4W just wasn’t making it
Did find Chris, GM3WOJ up near Inverness calling CQ and managed a difficult contact with him so the band wasn’t a total loss.
On the plus side did qualify the hill on 80m
Thanks to all on 60m and 80m that made the activation a success nevertheless!
Yep not been good.
Good run of German sota’s on 40m also shame just can’t hear them due to so many in contest running so ex amount of power.
Even when i got hold of GW6WRW/p she was 5 over 40+, needle well in red, still hard to hear due to 50+ signal from french contest station 3kc away.
Been informed ends 18:00hrs utc
Watch the band come live then as be our grey line too.
We always have the WARC bands 30/17/12 when there is a large contest on the other bands.
As a chaser I am always hope the Activators go to the WARC bands.
But then have to watch out for the Dx’peditins working their big Splits.
As their the only QRM I really watch for here.
Remember 30/17/12M when there is a contest to get away from the QRM
W4DOW
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the contesters - they have as much claim to the frequencies as anyone else - but they can make it very difficult for other band users. My motivation for using 40m (and 80m, though this has been pants for ages now) is to reach the UK/European chasers who for licensing or propagation reasons can’t work me on my favourite band of 60m so a move to the WARC bands doesn’t offer a solution for me. And Gerald does 30m anyway…
Which indeed I did from all 4 summits that we activated this outing, though the results from Wether Law SS-177 were somewhat disappointing, probably on account of it being a mealtime across much of Europe.
Perhaps the solution to the contesting problem is to make them all power limited events. If we can do what we do using 5 watts with a simple antenna, they should be able to do so much more with more inventive antenna arrays and we wouldn’t have all that splatter from their over-driven linears.
The problem is Paul, people moan about contesting without acknowledging that the reason there are so many contests is because lots of people take part either putting on contest stations or working them. It’s just that if you don’t want to play you get caught in the crossfire. It helps if you can do CW and SSB to avoid them. 30m CW is a refuge but not available to all.
The problem is the power these stations are running. As Gerald pointed out, power limitations would be one solution, however, policing them would be a challenge.
Look at the agro I experienced on Friday from Billinge Hill, while I was trying to work DX on the 15m band (I think you may have been listening). Totally wiped out by a station 5Kc’s below me. I was forced to QSY twice…
Maybe time to revisit VHF again… Much more civilised.
Well yes, there is. The contest organisers should state that certain enclaves on the traditional bands should be reserved for non-contest traffic, and disqualify entrants who stray onto those enclaves without appeal. They should have a rule that any stations complained about by more than a certain number of stations because of splatter will be disqualified. It isn’t rocket science, the organisers hold the whip hand if they would only be persuaded to use it. They are the ones responsible for an “attractive nuisance”!
Contests might be popular but so is non-contest activity. On any contest band the contesters bully everybody else off the band, brute force and ignorance takes over, drives out everything else and then proceed to batter the competition. This is insanity. Can this really be justified, do we really have to accept that might is right?
Why? Why should people “exercising their freedom” be limited because you want to “exercise your freedom”? What makes your freedom more important than theirs? What makes your freedom important that they can’t use any frequency they’re licensed to use?
You object to someone calling CQ contest on 7.105LSB with a big signal for 24hrs non-stop. What if they just call CQ for 24hrs non-stop. Not a contest then. Would that be acceptable?
What makes their freedom more important than others? What makes their freedom so important that others can’t use any frequency that they are entitled to use? You see, Andy, your questions are reversible.
I don’t object to contests, I occasionally take part myself. What I object to is the inescapability of the contests. Somebody organises a major contest and for a given period all the other users are bullied off the band. How can you justify this?
A really nice contest that I enjoy is the 80 metre Club Championship. The frequencies are restricted, in particular the DX band is avoided, and it runs for a limited time. This proves that it is possible to have contest free enclaves.
I was listening to Carolyn’s activation today on GW/SW-012 and for most of the time I could hear her quite well through the contest QRM, what I did notice though was what I can only describe as a feeding frenzy by the chasers which was obviously adding to Carolyn’s problems during contacts.
I was once rebuked by an activator for saying my call sign twice so what he thought of today’s performance’s I would be interested to hear. As a consequence I now only say my call once usually towards or at the end of the queue which I did today with Carolyn but unfortunately I wasn’t heard.
Me too, taking advantage of a very rare opportunity to get into the shack! Sadly, for the time I was listening she was pretty well buried under QRM, with a huge contest station about 1kc up. No point calling if you can’t tell whether the station you’re calling is coming back to you :-s
Happily I did a bit better on 60m, managing to dig Allan GW4VPX/P and Rod MW0JLA/P out of my local noise
This is another good reason for becoming able to make, at least, basic QSOs on CW.
When operating on HF:
In case there is a SSB+CW contest, we can go to the any more on the WARC bands.
In case there is a CW contest, we can go to SSB on any band, plus any mode on the WARC bands.
In case there is a SSB contest, we can go to CW on any band, plus any mode on the WARC bands.
We still have V and UHF.
There are ways to let everybody enjoy the hobby without bothering to each other.
73 de Guru
Well I’m a glutton for punishment or really enjoy a challenge, take your pick.
I had already qualified the summit on 17 metres, but even on there some very big stations were running 1KW into some large arrays, so didn’t need to come up on 40m
40m was just as bad as I’ve ever heard, no space anywhere but I thought give it a go the worst that could happen is I make no contacts. However the only stations I managed to work were the ones who either managed to find a lull or who were able to get above the noise I was receiving, I didn’t hear the poor chasing because due to the QRM only the best (or lucky) signals were going to get through and they were also the ones who could also hear me reasonably well.
as be our grey line too.