[UK-CONTEST] Digital modes and band plans - BARTG Clash.

David, G3YYD g3yyd at btinternet.com
Mon Mar 23 05:43:41 PDT 2009


I was in the BARTG Contest and have been for many years. It started I 
believe in the 60s but I do not have documentary proof of that. So you 
could say the CW event is the new kid on the block. However that is a 
useless point of discussion we have what we have.

I doubt if there was much of a clash on any bands except 40M so lets us 
look at 40.

The normal practice in past years on 40m is for BARTG RTTY to spread  
from about 7028 up to 7050. This year 7031.74 was lowest frequency and 
the highest was  7047.90. 95% of my 237 QSOs were between 7033.5 and  
7044, which is just over 10KHz.  RTTY guys should be complaining about 
CW operators in the data area - I heard one EU CW op above 7040 and 
plenty in the 7035-7040 area. Some even called CQ test on my run 
frequency even when it was obvious I was using the frequency. Waste of 
time, they would not make many CW QSOs while I was making RTTY QSOs, my 
filtering is only twice 50Hz wide and drops off the proverbial cliff. 
They soon gave up.

As for USA ops access to frequencies is why they have an incentive 
licence scheme. No sympathy at all from me as the solution is in their 
hands - work at it and get the full band.

The new 40m band plan, my personal view, is the same thing will happen 
next year as the allocation to CW and Data modes is too small to meet 
contest demand. Propagation will (hopefully) be improving and more 
stations will be competing in both events. There will be more SO2R 
operation with dual band CQing occupying twice the bandwidth of SO1R. 
(more Multi-Multi?) I think we need more flexible band planing with 
fuzzy edges so that during contests stations can officially expect QRM 
in those areas of the band adjacent to other modes. Look at ARRL DX 
phone SSB well below 7040 every year, below 7010 at times.

Moral of the story is live with it, for the same is going to happen next 
year and is part of the contest challenge. QRM and over coming it, is 
part of what contesting is about. It is part of what drives us to strive 
technically and tactically. My sympathy is with the non-contesters who 
just want to make a normal rag chew QSO little hope of that on the lower 
end of 40m this weekend.

David G3YYD


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