[UK-CONTEST] CW in V/UHF contests & the Liner-2

[Tim Hugill]

Don,

Dreadful ? The Liner 2 was a brilliant rig, and for only £120 + 10%VAT. 

Then someone changed the bandplan, moved the SSB calling frequency from
145.41 to 144.30, and we all rushed out and bought crystals to move the
channels down the band. 

Nothing horrible in using the tune button for CW either - some surgery was
required to insert a decent Rx front-end in the RF chain too.
Had many successful CW MS QSOs with that and a '6-40A.
Got to admit the microphone was rubbish though - changed mine for one from
my Pye Cambridge.
(Stop it !)
73
Tim  G4FJK

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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 11:14:03 +0000
From: Don Field <don.field at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [UK-CONTEST] CW in V/UHF contests
To: UK Contest <uk-contest at contesting.com>
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=Ax+T_Zd56_=-bdx-fjMsvH5SchA at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I believe the generally accepted benefit of CW over SSB is around 13dB, but
that assumes optimum filtering at the receive end - many VHF operators have
not invested in CW filters, so the benefit would be less.

But the discussion does remind me of one anecdote, doing VHF NFD with the
Northampton Club in the early 70's, using my Liner 2 on 2m (some of you will
recall that dreadful radio!). The band suddenly opened to Scandinavia and
there were plenty of SM1, SM4, etc. stations calling CQ, all worth large
numbers of points. But (almost) all on CW. What to do? I happened to have a
straight key with me, for the 4m station, and we wired it across the "tune"
button on the Liner 2, and I proceeded to work DX on CW. Horrible, but
increased our score significantly!

Don G3XTT