[UK-CONTEST] Contest-Free Zones

[Donald Field]

99% of the time these nets seem to exist to serve the egos of the
participants (I'm ready to perform a service ..). The remaining 1% they
actually carry traffic, but I wonder what value that traffic has. I have
read some of the ARRL reports after Katrina and, reading between the lines,
much of it was trivial. I suspect the "heavy" stuff, if any, was on VHF.

We do, though, have to bear in mind that one of the arguments for amateur
radio retaining its status is that we do provide a back-up communications
service, so we need to play this carefully. In practice, I suspect the WARC
bands and VHF offer more than enough opportunities to carry whatever traffic
is necessary.

By the way, one of the reasons for the nets is to support sailors in the
Caribbean area. This is generally because those amateur sailors get a ham
licence because it is cheaper to do so than to instal proper commercial
maritime gear. To my mind, this is not really what the amateur bands are
about.

I was also appalled to see a note on one of the refelectors from a US ham 
complaining about the contest activity outside the correct sub-bands 
(forgetting, I guess, that such sub-bands are not mandatory, even with US 
bandplanning), and copying his letter to the FCC. Talking about hams 
shooting themselves in the foot. Surely if we have issues they should be 
kept in the family, not copied in to those who issue our licences!

Don G3XTT

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "G3SXW" <g3sxw at compuserve.com>
To: "UK-Contest" <uk-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 8:14 PM
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] Contest-Free Zones


> Dear Colin,
> Please tell him that one-third of all HF bands are already
> "contest-free zones" - they are called the WARC bands.
> Since 1979 every single contest-sponsor in the world
> (without fail, to my knowledge) has adhered to the
> principle of keeping them contest-free.
> They are to be congratulated.
> 73 de Roger/G3SXW.
> _______________________________________________
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>