[CQ-Contest] ARRL Phone - 40 m lack of bandplan compliance

[Bruce Sawyer]

While everybody is on this thread of trying to justify SSB down to the
bottom of 40m, let me offer my own experience from this past weekend.  As a
QRP station, there was no way I could hold two frequencies to try to run on
40m.  Thus the only thing I could do was tune up and down the band trying to
find stations to call.  Practically every single US station I heard was
listening well below 7040, many down in the range of 7020.  For me here in
the Cayman Islands, it is a matter of law, not some gentleman's agreement,
that the lower limit on SSB is 7050.  Likewise, I think I remember from the
one time I operated in KP4 that the bottom limit BY LAW is 7040.  And I
wouldn't be surprised to find the same is true of a lot of other IARU R2
countries.  The result of this was that I worked practically nobody on 40m.
If people had been listening simplex, I could have called--most R2 countries
can transmit up to 7300, though we all know nobody in the US ever listens up
there.  If people had been listening above 7050, I could have called.
But...zilch.  I went and played on 80 and 160 CW instead.  And yes, 160 was
a similar mess!

Bruce, ZF2NT