Topband: 160 to NA

[Charles Bibb]

At 07:50 AM 1/24/2009, LA5HE Ragnar Otterstad wrote:
>I slept late this morning so worked just a few stns.
>
>Cannot help thinking, that if more stations would listen more carefully
>instead of CQ-ing endlessly, there would be more DX-qsos !

You are so right, Rag.  The situation is a real pain on this end, too.

This contest could be transformed from a merely "good" topband 
contest into an "excellent" topband DX contest by making the rules 
identical to its "big brothers", the CQ WW's.  That is QSO's between 
stations in the same country count ONLY for multiplier credit and NOT 
for QSO points.  If you want to work stateside-to-stateside on 160, 
the ARRL 160M contest is the place to do that.

The volume of key clicks last night was unbelievable from all the 
mindless "CQ TEST" robots in the US.

What a terrible waste of spectrum space when DX conditions were so good.

Charles - K5ZK