Bill writes:
> This anomaly on 40 is a result of the JA band restrictions
> which were in place for many years. The JAs were limited to
> 7030-7045 so that's where everyone congregated, even when
> working non JAs.
I can certainly understand that perspective from the west coast. But as I
see it from the east coast, the reason is that in EU the 40M phone segment
starts at 7050 or 7060, and all the EU guys like to be below 7050 :-)
40M band plan has improved in recent years, as SW broadcasters move up or
out. Still it's very common for 7080 region to be littered with phone stuff
from Europe or South America (incidentally... most of them not ID'ing...
just saying I'm pretty sure it's not legal ham activity.)
In CQ WW there's enough RTTY activity that activity spreads out all the way
up past 7080 to 7100 easy.
A real highlight of my RTTY RU 40M experience, given that it happens near
winter solstice, is when I'm calling CQ on 40M well before my sunset and
work JA's (presumably long path). That's a thrill. So I'm real glad there's
been recent improvements to JA 40M RTTY segment.
I'm actually surprised that I had so many QSO's below 7050 in RTTY RU yet
there is not a whole lot of EU in RTTY RU. (Certainly not like CQ WW where
there is a whole lot of EU activity on 40M and well every band!). Don't get
me wrong, I love working the EU guys in RTTY RU, but I'm surprsied that we
"adopt the EU band plan" in RTTY RU despite the fact that EU is small
compared to domestic stuff in RTTY RU. You might think a more rational
approach, would be to let the EU guys CQ below 7050, and we go down there
to work them, while we are CQ'ing higher up. Instead all the NA guys go
CQ'ing below 7050 and make it dang hard to work the EU guys who genuinely
have a reason to be dowh there.
80M is still less than optimal with EU able to do RTTY above 3600 but not
USA. So in the really big RTTY contests we end up going below 3580 which
starts some frequency fights with other digital modes in the 3570-3580
region.
Tim N3QE
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