[Amps] CW Activity

[w8hw at comcast.net]

Hello Jim,

Good to hear from you. Sorry that you don't hear them. All I can say is I 
hear and work them. I am looking at a bunch now. Signals from the bottom up 
to around 50 KHz up and more. DX generally (but not always) exist from 26 
down. CW Rag chewing generally starts from 26 KHz and up from bottom with 27 
up and 28 up being packed with QSO. Slow speed CW starts around 35 KHZ and 
up. I also spend time listening into other CW rag chews of all speeds while 
working on my tech bench. BTW, I am a long time op as well well over 50 
years.

JT65 only seems busy because at best, it takes four (4) minutes to pass 
three (3) pieces of short information (Call, Rpt and Locator).

73 and many DX, Bruce, W8HW
==============================



-----Original Message----- 
From: Jim Brown
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2017 20:53
To: amps at contesting.com
Subject: [Amps] CW Activity

I'd be interested to hear your definition of "hopping." I've been a CW
op long enough to remember when the CW bands REALLY WERE hopping all the
time. What I hear when I turn on my radio, hooked up to BIG antennas can
only be described as "hopping" when there's a major DXpedition or a
major contest. I've got dipoles for 80, 40, and 30 up more than 100 ft,
as well as four Beverages and phased RX loops. My SteppIR is at 120 ft.
If there are signals on the band, I hear them. Aside from contests and
DXpeditions, I rarely hear more than a handful of CW QSOs on any band at
the same time, and at least half of them are QRPers who seem to believe
that 10 WPM goes with QRP.

On most bands, there is FAR more activity on JT65 and JT9 than on CW.
This past winter, I let WSJT-X run 24/7 on 160M, and each morning
entering calls of all the stations I decoded into a spreadsheet. My goal
was to finish QRP WAS on 160 by working VT and SC. In about four months,
I logged more than 950 different stations in all states but VT, in most
VE provinces, on all continents and in more than 20 countries. I
regularly copied a VK6 (near Perth, about 8,000 miles), occasional EU,
AF, and several LU and PY most nights. At any given time, there were a
dozen or so stations active. Except during contests, it's unusual to
hear more than a couple of CW stations at the same time, and they're
usually calling CQ and getting no responses.

I'm near San Francisco; if I were anywhere east of W0, I'd bet that I'd
have at least 50% more calls in that JT65 log.

73, Jim K9YC

On Fri,4/28/2017 4:06 PM, w8hw at comcast.net wrote:
> That is just not true at all. The Cw bands are hopping all of the time.


_______________________________________________
Amps mailing list
Amps at contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/amps