With regard to the complaints about wide signals, I have two comments. I
personally believe that "Cleanliness is better than Loudliness." In spite of
the triteness of this saying, I try to live by it. I find that it really
does *not* cause more people, other than the usual lids, to crowd me. If
people would just set their radio's mike gain and speech processor according
to the manual, and use a peak-reading wattmeter to avoid the trap of
thinking the rig isn't putting out as much power as it should be, our fone
bands would be a lot better place on contest weekends.
Second, I know all too well from my experience in a past life evaluating
radios as the QST Product Review editor, and especially from my contesting
experience throughout the spectrum, that many people use crappy and/or
improperly adjusted radios that make *any* strong signal sound bad. Most of
the people who use these radios are not discriminating enough to realize
that it's *their receiver*, not all the other transmitters with strong
signals, that's at fault. Poorly designed AGC circuits, people leaving the
AGC on fast in SSB mode (with most radios), having the noise blanker turned
on, and just plain poor radios all contribute to this.
This is especially bad on VHF and up, where the difference between the
strongest signals and the weakest ones is roughly 100 dB. The loud guys are
always having to explain it to the whiners with cheap radios. The situation
on 10 and 15 in this part of the sunspot cycle isn't much different, nor is
it much different on 160 at any time in the cycle.
My suggestion to those ops who experience interference from what they think
is a whole bunch of dirty transmitters on the band is this:
1) Always try inserting 20 dB of attenuation before passing judgment on the
quality of a signal they're hearing
2) Make *sure* that the blanker is off. Even a great sounds bad when the
blanker is on and the band is full of signals.
--73, Rus, K2UA
k2ua@arrl.net
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