Greetings Top-Banders,
Regarding the posts in the last two issues may I offer the following: Most has
been done or tried before. Top Band is unique and at rare times the noise will
be low enough, the signals strong enough to almost sound like 20m.
Most of the time however, 160 stands on it's own being as challenging and
difficult to operate effectively as it was in Marconi days. Many of the acts of
then continue now. In those golden days we all know they had crappy receivers.
Their transmitters were not any better but they had POWER!
In some ways perhaps I'll speak for myself having given up high power to
concentrate on receive and transmit antennas or, at least in my case
directional RX/TX array in a low noise area. I realise this is beyond the
scope of the city dweller but the root of the problem remains. Lousy receiving
and too much transmit power.
While the serious DX'ers on this reflector have spent great time and effort to
balance the act of having a great signal and hearing well. This does not seem
to be the case on the average contest weekend. There are significant numbers of
operators on all continents that are running far more power than what they
should and or is legal in their geographic or sovereign location. I beg to say
that there is rarely one way propagation. The lack of communication in many
cases can be poor RX conditions, man made noise, atmospheric noise, lack of
propagation or QRM.
You will not see or hear of many serious contesters on Top Band running older
equipment. The best equipment with a few exceptions of the past decade would
roll over and die in today's contest environment. To me spending $4-10K on a
transceiver is out of the question. Partial resolve comes from directional RX
and low noise antennas.
The band is greatly divided in operating frequencies by geographic region.
Going up into the sudo phone region above 1875 is futile for DX.
Maybe we should drop down to two categories LP and QRP. Then everyone could fit
into the lower portion of the band below 1870. While we are at it we could ban
the use of automatic or manual tuners to eliminate the tuner uppers!
Perhaps then I would not feel so compelled to Jump on a HP CQ machine
frequency and call individual DX signals calling the Big Signal who can't hear
them!
I realise this is out there as well but just a thought......
73
--
Bob Kile, W7RH
DM35OS
--------------
Linux is like living in a teepee. No Windows, No Gates,
Apache in charge.
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