TopBand: 160 contests

[Jon Barclay N5JA]

>From N5JA

Hi guys.

With a few exceptions among you, I'm sure most would agree that contests
in general increase our opportunity to work "good stuff" on Top Band--
temporary stations are set up in great locations and rare countries, and
dxpeditions go to exotic places, and our opportunities are better at
those times than any other.

I think this applies certainly to all but the ARRL 160 CW contest, and
the CQ 160 CW & Phone contests.  These three take a lot of abuse as
"160 Meter Sweepstakes" contests (yeah, I did work a clean sweep in the
last two ARRL 160 contests :-), but I STILL work lots of DX during these
contests that I never hear at any other time.  I know I'm not as
"propagationally challenged" as many stations farther west, but I'm not
exactly on the East coast either (I'm in East Texas).

As for the SSB contest, this is only ONE WEEKEND out of the year (three
if you really don't like the two CW contests) that the band is packed
with stateside QRM, and if it weren't fun for lots of people, you
wouldn't have all the QRM!

A couple of possibilities have been discussed, including making it a
"DX only" contest, but you can really already do that in CQWW or the
ARRL DX contest. I think activity would wane and the 160 contests would
die from lack of activity in the "bad years" if stateside QSOs were not
permitted.

I personally do not favor moving the date of the SSB contest to a later
date-- QRN is normally so bad even by late February in the South (we've
been lucky here the last couple of years) that you must get many calls
one letter at a time between static crashes.  Moving the contest later
in the Spring (or early in the Fall) would make a tough contest simply
unbearable.

Overall, I've worked probably a dozen countries on 160 SSB that I've
never heard on CW, and most of those were nice surprises during the
CQ 160 Phone contests.

OK, everybody-- back to DXing!  There's good stuff on and the band is
quiet now!

Very 73,
Jon

-- 
Jon A. Barclay  N5JA  (ex-AA5BL)
N5JA@contesting.com

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