[UK-CONTEST] CQWW 2004

[Steve Rawlings]

Lee Volante wrote:
> In the main, I thought contesters did pretty well on 40m at the weekend.  In
> the daytime, as has already been said, general adherence to the preferred
> bandplan, and I also heard a GB station still making QSOs in the melee.  At
> night, most of the traffic was above .040, and whilst there were some
> Europeans below, the majority were DX.  There were some kHz free for CW.  If
> you're operating split, and so don't have your own transmission to 'make a
> space' on 40m, below .040 seems very tempting.

Just a point of clarification, as observed from my QTH in south Wales. 
While it is certainly true that the majority of traffic at night was 
above 7.040, it should be noted that, at night, the CW and data segments 
were full of EU (and some DX) SSB stations - all the way down to 7.005.

Being somewhat used to picking out signals in a 50 Hz bandwidth, I was 
not significantly affected by the SSBers.  However, it is worth noting 
that those operators using DC receivers; 500 Hz filters; or simple 
homemade ladder filters, would have been disadvantaged significantly by 
the presence of so much SSB in the 40m CW and data segments.


Regards to all,
Steve GW4ALG