Contesting is merely an activity, Paul, and it hasn't been pure operator-to-operator for decades. Not with Super Check partial, not with self-completing log entries, not with memory keyers, and not w
I don't see how that could be considered a valid QSO. In effect you were acting as a remote receiver to actually complete the QSO ... your friend was unable to adequately hear the DX from the same lo
It seems to me that your rather self-serving proposal totally discards whatever strategy there may be in the WPX contest and turns it into even more of a simple run fest. That K1LZ apparently played
I thought it was obvious that I meant the difference between Georgia and Massachusetts was minor compared to the difference between either of them relative (as in the word "relatively" that I used in
Attracting youth to ham radio in general is not going to happen, and I can list several reasons why not. That being said, the ONLY aspect of ham radio with any general appeal to "youth" (i.e., anyone
Picture this: You're nine years old and I tell you about this cool "game boy" box that lets you talk with other kids that have a similar box, except that for some reason the box only transmits the Kl
Dragging out that old, tired, and mostly erroneous accusation of "instant gratification" is totally missing the point. I spend a fair amount of time myself playing online multiplayer games, a genre t
Except that in football you aren't even allowed to make a field goal attempt that you are not entitled to. In radiosport, you essentially can ... you make a guess at a callsign or exchange that you d
Ham radio had that kind of appeal fifty years ago because for most of us it was the best way to get something done (i.e., communicate around the world). That no longer is even close to being true, an
A couple of comments: a. I don't believe for a minute that the number of licenses translates to the amount of activity on the bands. Most bands are practically dead much of the day even now that the
This sounds an awful lot like a resident of a crime-ridden neighborhood refusing to give information to the police while complaining that nobody is fixing the problem. Dave AB7E This becomes a proble
As a generalization, I would expect that aluminum in alkaline soil is OK, while acidic soil probably eats it up fairly quickly. The southwest tends to be fairly dry and alkaline, while areas with mor
I'll bet you're not so rigid that you don't use SCP, or that you don't use the logger to send your CW, or let the logger fill in the exchange, or let the logger dupe for you. Dave AB7E To me, that is
Let's get real here. That entire section refers to batteries being charged while in use so none of what you're saying is relevant. I operated QRP battery operated in Field Day for many, many years, c
Thanks for the morning chuckle. You laud John's post as "the voice of logic and reason" and then go on to strongly criticize both the rule and those who wrote it. And I too am astounded and amazed. F
To be honest, given the rather widespread use of SDRs and the availability of RBN data, I'm surprised that nobody has yet documented that fact in measurable terms over the course of a complete year.
I'm a subscriber to the VOACAP mailing list, and here's a recent (just a few weeks ago) comment from George Lane, one of the key original members of the IONCAP development team. "Beware of using CCIR
Great point. IONCAP and it's derivatives VOACAP and REC533 were NEVER meant to represent anything other than a generalized propagation prediction using monthly average data. Updating propagation pred
How does somebody who uses a decoder get in the way of anybody except themselves? And how does the use of a decoder in any way diminish the experience for anyone else? Besides offending your sensibil
I have several times posted to this reflector that I occasionally use CW Skimmer in Blind Mode, although only in Audio Mode where the only portion of the spectrum that gets displayed is that which fa