[CQ-Contest] Hurricane Ike and Contests

[Jeff Clarke]

>From ARRL Webpage:

Hurricane Nets Active on SSB for Ike (Sep 12, 2008) -- ARRL Contest Branch Manager Sean Kutzko, KX9X reminds all contesters to please be mindful of the situation in Texas and the Gulf Coast region this weekend; Hurricane Ike is currently slated to land near Houston early Saturday morning. "This weekend is the ARRL September VHF QSO Party, Worked All Europe (SSB), the North American SSB Sprint, the Arkansas QSO Party, as well as several other radio events," Kutzko said. "Please keep in mind that there will be Net operations going on in the upper portions of 80, 40 and 20 meters for the affected Gulf Coast area in the path of Hurricane Ike. If you find yourself being asked to change frequencies because you're on a Net for Hurricane Ike operations, please cooperate. Do your part to keep Net operations free of interference during this critical time."


Thanks to Sean for his public service announcement. To be fair is the ARRL going to publish an announcement on the front page of their website to the general ham population to remind them to avoid these frequencies as well. It seems too many time contesters are blamed for the problems that occur on the bands. I think 99.9%
of us are smart enought to do the right thing and avoid these frequencies.

Much of the important hurricane traffic takes place over VoIP and Echolink or local Skywarn VHF repeaters so interference from contesters should be a non-issue.
Many of these hurricane nets on 20 meters might be useful when a hurricane is down in the Carribean but when one is near the coast of the USA you get 24 hour
around the clock coverage from media outlets such as CNN and the Weather Channel so I don't really see a useful purpose that these nets serve.


Jeff KU8E