Spent some time yesterday and today pottering in the shack, working on one of my eBay purchases (have taken some before photo's so might write it up when I get a chance! either way a good news story its up and working again, simple fix thankfully, now some cleaning and further tidying up is needed), and I had the FT-1000D on as usual.
Totally forgot that it was the CQ WW WPX Contest over this weekend. For those that don't know this is a marathon worldwide contest run by CQ Magazine - (and I do mean marathon) SSB contest over two full days, with many sections both Multi and Single Operator, high power (1.5Kw where allowed!!!) all the way down to QRP (5w).
Now let start by saying (classic :) ) - I don't hate contests (in fact I won the 2012 PW 70Mhz low power contest operating portable), BUT what a total mess !!!
40M was wall to wall contesters ( and I do mean wall to wall I checked stations from 7.045Mhz all the way up to 7.199Mhz) - firstly my radio's are properly calibrated and so the station operating on the latter frequency was surely operating out of band ? (assuming a bandwidth of just 1.5Khz which is a little low) then he was out of band - thus illegal (this was a DL station) the lower edge was right down in the digital area and whilst not illegal didn't really keep up the spirit of the bandplans (This was HB station). Some we really badly overdriven with poor audio and over compressed audio giving rise to wide signals (and no it wasn't my front end being overloaded!) the worst was over 6K wide - this one was so bad I had to put it on a bandscope as I couldn't believe it...... it really was that wide!!!
I did give away a few multipliers to UK stations earlier today, and a few US stations when I could hear them this morning.
I couldn't listen to the RSGB news broadcast on 7.150 Mhz , not the end of the world, and I did manage to work an couple of non contest stations but anyone wanting to do something not related to a contest had to migrate to a WARC Band.
This I did onto 17M and what a difference, yes some "your 59 73's" type contacts, but a longer chat with the states, and some nordic contacts and across into Spain and Greece what a breath of fresh air !!!
Now I'm a very competitive person but think to effectively shut down 40M / 20M for basically two days over this weekend is a little much. I, for the first time ever, felt sorry for a station (actually a UK amateur living in Germany) who was trying for a solid half an hour or so to get a contact at the top end of the band (no not the one above who was out of band !) he was called by people asking for his serial number etci. time and time again, I tried to go back to him but the contest QRM was so bad we couldn't make it. He like others simply gave up.
I'm sure he wasn't alone, I must be getting old.......
48 Hours is a little much in my opinion 24 hours yes 48 no.
Just me ?
Probably it is !!! - mutters as he walks off with a bottle wine grumbling to himself :)
No comments:
Post a Comment