[CQ-Contest] From VO1DD re Interference with emergency traffic

[David Gilbert]

1.  Just because you think your 600 watts should be loud in Germany 
doesn't mean that you were louder than whatever European QRM DD4B might 
have been experiencing.  It seems kind of presumptuous of you to simply 
accuse him of ignoring you.

2.  In the U.S., the CW subband on 20m extends all the way up to 14150 
... no SSB is allowed below that frequency for any class of license.  
Given that 20m is not much of a short haul band much of the time, it 
seems questionable to me to park an emergency SSB net on a frequency 
that excludes 90% of the regional pool of potential responders.  In any 
case, even you should be able to recognize the difficulty in trying to 
tell someone in another country they don't have the right to operate on 
frequencies authorized by their own government.

3.  Most contesters I know try their best to give emergency nets, many 
of who operate on poorly publicized frequencies commonly known only to 
those who spend time on them, as much leeway as necessary.  There were 
tens of thousands of hams on the air that weekend and you choose to 
negatively categorize all contesters based upon one of them on another 
continent who probably didn't hear you anyway.  How petulant of you.

4.  What kind of "emergency" capability doesn't plan for a backup??  
Your net doesn't have any provision for temporary QSY in case of 
interference?  That doesn't sound like a very reliable communication 
procedure to me.

It's probably a good thing that I and many other contesters choose NOT 
to categorize all net operators and emergency nets based upon your email.

73,
Dave   AB7E




On 11/30/2010 1:12 PM, DK Card wrote:
> Good afternoon,
>
> My name is Doug Card, callsign VO1DD.  During the contest period ,
> specifically Sunday on or about 1235Z , our maritime mobile net was involved
> with a vessel who had declared an emergency on a frequency of 14.122.50.
> This is a frequency used by the Mississauga maritime mobile net which is on
> 24/7 @ 1245Z.   This vessel had been having difficulty for a few days.
> Conditions continued to deteriorate for this vessel. We were working the
> vessel and taking important information from the captain at the time.  All
> was well until a station involved in the contest came on to the frequency
> and started to call CQ contest.
>
>
>
> I am primarily a CW op and was able to clearly copy the callsign, DD4B ,
> which apparently is a contest station in Bonn , Germany.  I asked on SSB for
> him to please respect the situation and to please give us a clear frequency
> to operate.  I asked several times as he continued to call CQ test. His
> signal here was very strong. I switched to CW and still got no response and
> the interference continued.  He continued and started to draw other contest
> stations to the frequency which of course caused even more interference.  If
> he heard me and still blatantly ignored the situation he is not a true ham
> operator as far as I'm concerned.  Ham radio exists because of its public
> service element and when a contest interferes with the ability of hams to do
> that service , I have serious problems with ham radio being used as a
> contest medium especially if they only "come out to play" for contests as
> apparently many operators do.  I have no problem with that as long as they
> are aware that there are a lot of us out there who spend considerable
> operating time in public service and deserve to be respected as well
>
>
>
> That far up in the band is not primarily a CW portion of 20 mtrs although I
> am well aware that CW is legal anywhere in the ham bands.  Again I am
> primarily a CW op and as such am very careful when operating on CW in the
> phone portion of the band (which does not happen often).  I can appreciate
> that the station likely had his filtering narrowed right down and could not
> read my sideband signal clearly.  However he was technically in the phone
> portion of the band and should have been more aware of the possibility that
> emergency traffic might exist.  Hopefully he was not using a code reader.
>
> I was running 650 watts to the antenna and I am sure he would have been able
> to hear me if not so focused on scoring points!.  I am well aware that CW
> contesting is not the way it used to be with keyboards/computers used for
> sending as well as decoding.
>
>
>
> The situation was very serious and could have turned out very badly ending
> in a possible loss of a vessel at sea. For this reason as far as I'm
> concerned , during contests stations should be limited to the CW sub-bands
> so that the possibility of another incident like this occurring is minimized
> as most vessels on the high seas use SSB communications.
>
>
>
> This incident has certainly done nothing to enhance my feelings about
> contesting.  I'm always told that contesting makes better operators.  If
> this incident is an example of that , that reasoning holds no credence.
>
>
>
> 73
>
> Doug Card  VO1DD
>
> Hearts Delight ,Newfoundland
>
>
>
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