[RTTY] Band Plan and RTTY contesting

[Phil Sauvey]

I heard this same station and my contest scratch notes tell me that I thought it was a European station sending that message. Don, I heard this as well (between 1700 & 1800z) and he was sending the message that from 14099-10101 (I think he meant 14101) is the beacon band and he was referring those listening to the IARU band plan. I heard them send this message for several minutes but then left the frequency and I never heard anymore.  I normally try to avoid this area and play above 14.104. I did have several times when I was between 14.108 & 14.114 that someone kept sending AMTOR, PACTOR or one of those TOR's, on top of my signal but eventually left (after I had been there for awhile). There were times when the band was totally busy and stations were solid from 14.074 up to 14.118! I did notice that the RTTY folks appeared to have left a gap for the PSK31 folks around 14.071 to 14.073. All in all, I  thought it all went well and I did not see any other tempers flare. I did
 see a few making their very first RTTY contacts and was pleased to see the contesting station(s) have a little patience with the two QSO's that I saw. Oh, and I even heard some HF packet stuff (love that sound) but I am sure that those contacts probably had to wait until after the contest (I believe a BBS). Lots of great stuff this weekend even if the bands were not the best!
   
  Phil 
  KL8DX
  

Jerry Flanders <jeflanders at comcast.net> wrote:
  That is not actually the beacon frequency, as I recall.

But - how big a "guard band" should we actually allow for something 
like this? Do we back off far enough to make it possible to copy the 
beacon on a $30 toy-quality pocket shortwave receiver?

Seriously, is there a useful recommendation that those of us who use 
beacons as well as contests can actually live with? Or, considering 
that most _serious_ beacon users can probably tolerate a signal 300 
Hz away without interference, do we need a guard band at all - 
especially when contesters only need that spectrum space for a few 
hours per week?

Jerry W4UK



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