[CQ-Contest] Contesting Popularity

[Ward Silver]

There is a lot of activity on the digital modes just about all the 
time.  You can tune upwards from 14.070 and hear a lot of signals, for 
example.

PSK31 is very popular because it's easy, free (as far as software goes), 
supports casual chatting, and works at surprisingly low SNR. Folks who 
don't have an effective station for the traditional CW/SSB modes can 
have fairly good success with PSK31 at low power and rarely cause RFI.

If you took all of the PSK31 signals, turned them into CW, and spaced 
them accordingly, the bands would sound a lot busier.  The hams are 
there, a lot of them just aren't on phone or CW.

73, Ward N0AX