[RTTY] Fwd: [digitalradio] RTTY Hall of Shame

[Robert Chudek - KØRC]

Well I'm with you here Ty, I can't seem to get my call on many respectable lists either! And btw, how were those "Top Seventeen" stations selected anyway? And who determined the list should be truncated at 17 in the first place? Who came in last place? I don't think it was a level playing field anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I do admire the technical achievement and usefulness of the NCDXA international beacon system, but I consider it a secondary user on our bands. For those who want to know more about it, go here:  http://www.ncdxf.org/Beacon/intro.html  

There are two parts to this situation; 1) cognizance by hams of the beacon system in the first place and, 2) avoiding the operation on the exact beacon frequencies (which, by the way, this automated system operates on numerous ham bands, not just 20 meters).

Regarding 1), there will always be insufficient "advertising" to the masses that this system even exists. There have been articles in QST but that doesn't mean everyone will read them. Last week during a General Operator Class, several 40+ year veterans were not even aware it existed, even though they are active contesters. And so you'll get the dozens of operators that honestly don't know and will start a good run on 14.100. And if it's a rare DX station, well all bets are off!

Regarding 2), during a contest there's thousands of stations operating which serve as a real-time purpose of "determining propagation" from all over the world. If you want to know if there's propagation from South Africa during a contest weekend, tune the band. As I said, a beacon is a secondary user of a frequency in my books.

73 de Bob - KØRC in MN

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Message: 7
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 01:29:12 -0400
From: "Tyler Stewart" <k3mm at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [RTTY] Fwd: [digitalradio] RTTY Hall of Shame
To: "'Andrew O'Brien'" <andrewobrie at gmail.com>, <rtty at contesting.com>
Message-ID: <011401c6e063$892debb0$6500a8c0 at basement>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

Crap!  Used to be we only had to worry about being jammed by autopilot
packet stations....now we have beacons taking up space as well?!  Sheesh!
Last time I checked the bands, I didn't even think to look for a stinkin'
beacon!  Oh, that's right.  I'm supposed to look on a web site to tell me
when the bands are open...

Damn, why didn't I make this list?  (I cant seem to get on that RTTY
top-contester list either!)

Seriously though, this is totally inappropriate use of the RTTY reflector.
These poor bastards and I, quite frankly, probably didn't even know about
the beacon(s).  Why not be a nice guy and explain it to us before the
contest, including how much bandwidth we must protect for them?  Then you
can spend the whole contest operating instead of chasing guys off your
beacon frequency!  Of course my next question has to be:  Why didn't you put
these beacons in the "DX windows"?  Then you could operate the contest and
not have to worry that there would be plenty of self-appointed beacon
guardians available to police the beacon frequencies.

I guess I should go get some sleep now before I completely lose it!

Please feel free to pollute the digitalradio reflector bandwidth with my
response.  After all, fair is fair.

Ty, K3MM