The AM Forum

Man - 160 meters is WALL TO WALL  *DUCKS*.!  What is going on?  It's a real mess.  Usually, I get on 160 in the evenings - not THIS evening, that's for sure.

Wow.

Regards,

Steve

probably this:

http://www.hornucopia.com/contestcal/contestdetails.php?ref=259

I'm having fun. The Contest Corral http://www.arrl.org/contest-calendar is your guide for contest nirvana.

The corntesters are having their corntest thang I'ze a guessin!

Swell...

Pete said:
You would Pete, you would.  :P

The 3700 kHz region of 80 meters was very uncluttered. That portion many nights is just as quiet as 160 meters is on a non-contest night. I had a nice QSO with N2RY, WA4PGI and N4RSS on 3705 with Nary a SSB signal heard. Later, F6AQK was coming through at about S9 to +5 db over.

Unlike most QuaRMtests, they were all way up to the top edge of the band.  Usually, QuaRMtest activity dwindles off above 1900, with little if any activity above 1950.

I managed to get a QSO started on 1885, with a station in MI who was running a Yaesu on AM through a linear. After a few minutes, all slopbucketeers were gone, leaving us a hole in the band, and the frequency remained clear the rest of the evening.

Steve, I heard you try to break in, but when we turned it over to you, you were gone.

All slopbucket signals were five-nine.  ;D

I could hear you OK, but the other guy was getting clobbered by a contester located pretty close to me. I figured you two guys were hearing each other FB, I would just move on.

If you can't beat'em, join'em.

If I get clobbered by slopbucket QuaRMtesters to-night, I'll just jump in and do a little QuaRMtesting myself.  Of course, they won't likely even realise I am transmitting on AM...  And, I'll give honest signal reports, none of that bogus 5-9 rubbish.

I'll submit a log per instructions on the website, to make sure the QuaRMtesters I work keep it honest and accurately report the signal reports they get from me.

 ;D ;D ;D

send the log in on paper.  to heck with all that cabrillo nonsense. 

QRZ.....again again, I got the KR repeat ur suffix a couple of times, Ok got it ur, 59.  It is sorta silly, is it not? Why not just give the correct rst? It would be just as fast and easy.  KR4WI

Because, no one cares how strong or weak they are as long as a report acknowledgment is made.

Excellent preparation for an emergency.

I suppose y'all may as well know the ARRL Int. DX bucket contest is next weekend also, Mar. 5 and 6.  Plan accordingly.

Which begs the question why have a report at all? If the guy on the other end answers with your call, you're done. It would allow a lot more contacts to be made not wasting time with a useless report. The scores would be phenomenal! No records would be set.

Nothing in the published QuaRMtest rules mentions anything about mandatory five-nines.

I would want to know how well my signal was getting out in all directions and all distances.

That bogus 5-9 crap just ratchets the dumbing-down effect one more notch.

I fail to see any thrill in spending hours yelling "CQ Contest" into the mic just to see how many contacts I could chalk up, with no regard to how well the other station is hearing me or anything else except his state or province. I would take me about 5 minutes to lose interest through sheer boredom.

But I don't guess many of them actually yell in the mic any more.  Most of the CQ Contest calls sound like automated robots. You can tell it's a robot when you hear the same inflections or random background noises that happen to occur on certain syllables repeated over and over on each call.

At one time contests met a legitimate need, or rather the stated need and real need were the same.  The idea for them was first conceived in the 1930s with, IIRC from my reading, the Sweepstakes and / or Int. DX Contest being first.  The thinking was that there were not many ham stations and operating times for hams were random.  That made it difficult to learn about propagation and quickly and easily evaluate different circuits and antennas.  Someone, maybe Handy, can't remember, got the idea for a way to get all hams, or as many as possible, to be active at the same time.  The carrot was to make it competitive and award prizes (certificates) as a lure to get hams to be active but the real purpose was to have a good way to test stations and learn about band condx and antennas.  

That need long ago went away on HF at least, with today's ionosphere analysis methods, accumulated body of knowledge and sophisticated tx and rx gear and antennas.   Today's contests are mostly a ham economic engine.  There is a symbiotic relationship between magazines, manufacturers, vendors, ham consumers and contests.   Take a look at shack photos of contest stations.  You will likely see lots of new plastic gadgets and plastic radios but probably never see anything like a KW Matchbox or 75A-2 sitting there.

Contesters themselves will tell you they account for the vast majority of new equipment purchases, plus the big towers and beams that really generate the big money for antenna vendors and makers.  Magazines like CQ would probably be in trouble financially if it were not for the contests they sponsor.  Probably half of the CQ subscribers are contesters who are only interested in the CQ contest results.   And they run ads for vendors and manufacturers for stuff that gets bought by contesters.   So the RST thing is irrelevant as real information content because no one cares about what contests were originally invented for--it's all about winning, selling and buying.   This is why contests have been warped into an almost modern day radio video game with everything run by PCs, and everything as automated as possible.   If you talk to these guys, you learn that a majority of station maintenance time is spent on debugging software and resolving PC-radio compatibility issues.  That's not my idea of a good time.  

If the ARRL were really interested in bringing contesting back to its roots by changing the rules to force hams to give real reports or, in the case of Field Day, make emergency preparedness (supposedly the real purpose of Field Day) the prime goal I'd bet participation would drop by at least 50%.  That won't happen because the real prime goal is (as is often the case) this:  $$$.   I don't have a problem with free market commerce which is what this is all about but I'd have a lot less problem with contests if those involved would quit kidding themselves with all this baloney about signal reports, emcom, station evaluations etc. and admit that what drives contests and spawns yet more of them, the big ones at least, is that they generate revenue and provide some operators with ego gratification.

  
 

Rob said:
I always thought that CQ was not only a connotation of a CW call but in essence stands for "Co(r)ntester Quartely."  ???

Nahhh I call CQ when there seems to be no activity.  Has nothing to do with contests.  I think CQ comes from an age WAYY BEFORE any corntests.

Don, when you think about what's out there for record/playback, voice recognition, and remote receivers, I bet someone already has an application that allows COMPLETELY automated contesting. 

The human comes back at the end of the weekend, and the rig prints out a receipt with the tally of contacts.  A PDF has already been emailed to the contest sponsor.

And the weekend instead has been spent elsewhere.

John said:

The call did. But the magazine came out around the time co(r)ntests were becoming the rage.

I spent a few hours in the 160 contest last night shaking down an Alpha 76PA I just rebuilt for a customer. Its an excellent way to get a lot of RF out the pipes in a short time.

Carl

Usually the 160m QuaRMtests occupy about the lower 80 to 150 kc/s of the band, and leave the top end unmolested, with plenty of room for non-QuaRMtesters to operate.  Not this time.  They SOLIDLY occupied every kc/s of the band from 1800.0 to 2000.0, and were very aggressive about holding onto the frequency.  I tried a couple of times to start an AM QSO in the vicinity of 1885 and  right away multiple QuaRMtesters jumped right on the frequency with their automated CQs, obviously to discourage anyone from answering my (automated) CQ. 

I could have just gone on and let the thing keep running all evening, but instead, decided to give CW a try.  There were NO CW stations on the lower end of the band at all.  So I fired up on 1802 kc/s with a CQ.  Some unidentified station kept sending "QRL" (but no callsign), even though no slopbucketeer was audible down that low in the band. Finally a PW CW station answered me, and we carried on for a few minutes.  When we signed out, a weak station from California came back, but about then, a slopbucketeer up the band about 5 kc/s let loose with a broad, splattering signal that wiped out the band all the way down to 1800.  Actually, he wasn't splattering; it almost sounded like IBOC in the AM BC band.  His splatter stopped up the band a way from where I was operating, but he generated additional white noise hash on both sides of his signal, which varied syllabically with his voice. I was able to copy about 50% through the hash, but then another one came on; this time his LSB extended all the way down to the edge of the band, so I finally gave it up as a lost cause.

From the strengths of many of those signals all way across the band, there must be MANY stations on the air that have the capability of putting out a strong signal on 160, whether with good, high dipoles or well grounded verticals, or by using the "Eimac antenna" solution. But where are they other 50-odd weeks a year?  It takes a  lot of work to get a really good signal on top band, and it usually isn't cheap. I find it hard to believe that anyone would really go to all that much trouble and spend all that much money just to get on the air and inanely swap five-nines for one or two weekends a year.

Regarding Sweepstakes, back in the 30's when it was first created, it wasn't just one or two weekends.  It lasted a whole week.  If that included both weekends and all days in between, that means it went on for 9 full days!

I've been amazed how many hams I've talked to don't connect "CQ" with "Seek You".  Duh.... :-\

73DG

I took a quick listen with the flex last night before bed and was sort of amused to see a station parked at 1801 with his lower side band extending a couple of Khz outside the band edge. He was calling automated CQ's, and surprisingly (or I guess not) generated several contacts while I was listening. Nobody seemed worried about the band edge. Maybe they don't realize the radio makes signals anyplace except where the dial reads.  :(  This particular guy didn't seem to have his head in the game much. He got a reply, that was perfectly copyable here, and it took him about 8 tries to get the guys call right, but of course he was "59 in RI".

I find contests to be of some use stimulating activity on quiet bands, like up on VHF. I learned a lot about what was possible on VHF doing some of the VHF sweepstakes contests back in the early 80's, whereas most of the time the bands are dead. But on HF, at least on the lower bands where propagation is pretty predictable, it seems pretty pointless and boring. Sort of like sitting down in front of your computer with a list of IP addresses and typing PING. I refer to most of the contests as "Pingfests" around the contest folks in our club for that reason.   ;D

I also think Field day is useful, although I prefer to approach it as an exercise in 'field expedient radio' rather than a contest. I'm content to throw up a system with some batteries and solar and get it working and make a few dozen contacts to verify it's working well and getting out, and then it starts feeling like playing PING again and I get bored and go do something else.

I wouldn't have an issues with contests, to each their own, if they were confined to some subset of the band. It's the total takeover like the RF locusts have come and the attitude that nothing else is important as getting a few more points that rubs me very much the wrong way.

I would never have connected it either.....

I always thought it stood for "Calling General", ( or "General Call" )

I disagree, Don, about the link between a station's ability to put out a good signal and spending a lot of time on the air.

Using myself as an example, my airtime on AM comes only when a band is in good shape and/or there are interesting stations to talk with. I am not compelled to get on every day or night, nor --once on the air -- do I feel that I must spend many hours at it.

And, by my own estimation, I've got a lot of work in my station, and it wasn't cheap to accomplish. The payoff for me is not quantity of air time, it's the quality of what I hope to get out of being on the air.  

The same satisfaction must exist for people in other parts of the hobby too, even if their activity or mode is not something I'm interested in.

"CQ" is another one of those abbreviation from the early days of wire telegraphy. 

Most land lines were Kinda like a party line, many ears were listening and the two letters followed by a name or train station call kept everyone else from asking "Who?"

Purely based on my personal experience, as my dad worked for Sufferin' Pacific, and I heard sounders in the yard office back in the early 50's.  They could break the main line East or West, but the circuit went from one end of their tracks to the other through Yuma. 

At that time, wire Morse could easily outdistance radio and, since it all belonged to the railroad, was more reliable and cheaper than the phone.

On radio, doesn't everyone follow it with a qualifier? 

i.e. CQ DX. 
CQ N8UH. 
CQ 75 meter AM.

or even CQ Contest.

73DG

The proper way to do it is, "Calling Charlie Queen, Charlie Queen, calling Charlie Queen."

Does Charlie ever answer?  :D

When I was a kid and first started to listen to short wave on my parents' broadcast radio with SW band, I tuned into the ham bands and  listened to AM phone.  I kept hearing the same two stations calling each other all the time, but they never seemed to be able to make contact. One had the call sign LOCQ and the other was CQ20.

"   Does Charlie ever answer?  :D "

Only if he's a queen.... ..

 :D

So, then for the last almost 100 years, shouldn't the general call for contacts be "SU", "SU", "SU 75", etc.  ???  Of course, for the texting individual/ham operator, this might be confusing as "SU" is used for "shut up" and "screw you"  :D

From the ARRL Handbook: "CQ means Calling any station"

Also

Study Guide to Exam Questions - Question Pool
T2A08
What is the meaning of the procedural signal “CQ”?

A. Call on the quarter hour
B. A new antenna is being tested (no station should answer)
C. Only the called station should transmit
D. Calling any station

Answer is (D)

It would appear not everyone understands this.

http://w2dtc.com/w2dtc-sound-bites/2005-1103-ab2ez-doesnt-like-w2vjz.mp3

I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.

You are being deliberately disingenuous. There was a thread here on this very subject a while back. Stu made it plain that he did not want to talk to that man under any circumstances. So VJZ harassed him when he'd call CQ, also waving that interpretation of the rules.

I don't believe there is a "calling any station except xxx", although I'm sure it would have been useful in dealing with that particular problem!

No LIDS, No Kids and no Space Cadets!

There's a certain art to calling CQ, but I don't know what it is.  Everyone seems to have their own style.

Some sound like they are working too hard. Said quickly: CQ-CQ-CQ-CQ-CQ-CQ-CQ-CQ-  this is  W2XXX -W2XXX-W2XXX-W2XXX -CQ-CQ-CQ-CQ-CQ-CQ-CQ-CQ-.......

Others sound like they are addressing the congress in fine oratory fashion with perfect diction, inflection and tone, even adding some voice growl at the end of each phrase.  [Congratulations, OM - wonderful speech!]

But in general, most fall way out of character from their normal voice patterns and sound uncomfortable. It's almost like watching some white people dance.   CW is the only way to hide... ;D

T

Hello,
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone at home?

That can be very frightening to watch and wondering if they need an EMT.  ::)

No lids, no kids, no space cadets, no phonetic  fanatics, no school bus
riders please

 ;D

Good observation. I'm making light of the entire ridiculous situation. Most jokes are their own version of the truth.

Also useful when the "Roll Eyes"  emoticon just doesn't quite cut it.....

Thats generally untrue.

Just for contests alone that include 160M there are least 10 major contests a year with many entering all or most of them.

The rest of the year they are chasing DX mostly on CW or yaking away on SSB swapping lies about how well they heard the DX station.



Stanley lives on in infamy. He was a character.

Stanley? You mean Mike Primus.

Even his name meant "Class A".

I have a friend (from ham radio chat rooms) that hasn't been licensed all that long.  He lives in an apartment in NYC and FINALLY got a radio (some kind of older kenwood, 440 something).  He was able to somehow get a 40 meter dipole up by stretching it from a window (4th floor) to a tree.  

He actually had 30 someodd contacts during this 160 ssb thing on 160 and that was from 9 states!  This was 100 watts on a 40 meter dipole among BUILDINGS in NYC (with a tuner of course).

I was pretty darn impressed, I have NEVER made a 160 meter contact on any mode. There's a lot of metal around from the buildings so maybe his signal was loading or reflecting something/somewhere.

BTW, I'm really trying to use CQ but NO other Q-codes for phone.  Heck we should just speak plain English if you ask me.  We should stop saying  "I'm going to QSY" or "I'm going to QRT" or "There's some QRM" "QSB...."

JUST SAY "I'm going to move to xxxx frequency now."  "I am signing off"  "Jeeze there's a lot of interference from that slopbucket"  "You just took a deep fade!"

I dunno, just makes more sense to me.  We are talking about PHONE modes here, not CW.  Don't get all freaked out, it's just my opinion and worth every penny you just paid for it.

John KX5JT

I mean Stanley from CT, forget his call but that was his line on 75 in the 50's

Stanley, W1TJX, Putnam, CT?

T

It was 80 meters back then sonny

That was Mike Preemus, W2OY (he "Anglicised" his name by spelling it that way).  Mike was world-famous for that phrase. Stanley must have been a copycat.

It was 75m for as long as I can remember.  I think that dates all the way back to the early 30s when they moved the phone band from the low end of the band (3500-3550 I believe), to the top end, either 3900-4000 or 3950-4000.  75.0m is exactly 4.0 mc/s. So the phone band got to be called "75", while the cw band was called "80".  A lot of people still call it "75" all the way down to 3600.

Yup, that Stanley. I first heard him around 52 listening on my grandparents black dial Zenith. Later I had many chats with him on 75 AM, he was pleasant once he got to know you and with PP 250TH's I was accepted 8)

Later W2ONV used a similar line on 20 SSB.

Never heard of the other guy.

If you've never heard of W2OY, we're going to take away your old buzzard certificate or some alien has invaded your body.   ;D

I even worked W2OY and remember trying to sound like a buzzard so he would talk to me.
I think W2ONV is SK. I worked him many times and have one of his safety belts.

Somewhere in 1973....

Mr Vu:    "Doctor,  W2OY left me with emotional scars. I was about 13 and thought it was my fault when he beat me up after I returned his CQ ... sob.."  :'(


Doctor: "Mr. Vu, my advice to you is to put up some 190' towers,  build a few big rigs and strap Chuck to get back your manhood.

Vu: Thank you, doctor.


T

One of the dumb bunnies who put up stacked 20 meter monobanders just like ONV likes to run AM off 7160.

I wish I could have seen the guy's face when he found out the real reason ONV did so well.

yes Bill ONV is sk.  died a year or two ago.  Besides the climbing belt Bill had a few other irons in the fire.  He ran a business called UPI out of Paterson NJ and bought used industrial and transmitting tubes ("Turn your excess tubes into instant CASH!!").   

One time around 1989 Bill came down to the 75M DX window looking to kick some ass. I heard him talking to his buddies about putting up a wire loop and showing the low band guys how it's done. I guess he figgered it was easy.  The first night he ran into Chuck and me holding court into Eu. He lasted about 15 minutes with us and then signed out. I heard him a few more times working DX on 75M, but soon went back to 20M where he was a big log with that 20M stack....  Moral: Be careful when playing another man's game...  ;D  He was a unique character for sure.  I liked his spunk.

T

I never heard of him but my years of off air in the middle 1970's were filled with a guy by the name of Jack from Andover, Mich. He was a W8??? and had a rig all in the open inside what looked like chicken crates. I think he was a school teacher.

My drift on him that he was not liked by some? I guess that could be said about anyone but ham radio is a smaller community.

Bill told me one has to give up their sex life in order to figure out how to program a Behringer DSP9024.

I'd get the heck rid of that ONV belt pronto before someone gets hurt. The rivits are not kosher.

What ya mean?  The motto in the ad said, "Now feel safe climbing towers."   ::)


Yes, I agree. A waist band and a simple strap going around your ass ain't gonna cut it.  Any ham over 50 (or any age for that matter) who still climbs is crazy not to use a full-body harness like fireman and mtn climbers use - AND be clipped onto a fall-arrest device sliding on the cable running alongside the tower.  Cheap insurance.   The alternative is either hitting the ground or having your guts ripped open when the waist band gives ya a 10G yank.

 "Now feel SAFE climbing hambone towers."

T

Then in the 80s it was recycled again by W-A-4-Doggie on SSB. His version was 'No Lids, No Kids, No Retirees. You old guys don't have much time left, you could die on me mid-conversation. I wanna talk with someone who has something to talk about other than when their social security check is arriving' and similar rants.

A couple guys really had his number though, and knew how to push his buttons. When one showed up talking about what Mike really did for work, he'd suddenly become bored with the conversation and leave the frequency pretty fast. Seems he got his ticket yanked at some point too, though I can't recall for sure.

   

I never claimed to listen to all the retards back then. 75 was just an afterthought band for me anyway just as it is today ;D




I used to really pull his chain. Iffn I remember his ticket was revoked and he came back with a new call and a false name and really got in the deep doo doo.



Location on the Palisades and the 4CX10000 in the garage helped.

The other PITA on 75 SSB was that obnoxious old banker out on LI who thought all he needed was money until Chuck kept blowing him away with the 3 el KLM (and the 4 x 8877 amp) on the 120' tower on the hill overlooking everything to EU and JA longpath. I bought that antenna but regained my sanity and sold it. Ask Chuck about some of the wild evenings we used to have in Mexican restaurants usually after he stopped here for a few hours after work. ;D

I worked W2OY once when I was a kid living in Illinois living on the farm.

I had shorted out the crystal filter in my Kenwood TS-510 to try pure, DSB AM. Drove a pair of 4CX250Bs.

Hooked up with the guy and told him I was running a Gates BC-1. That cranked him. "Oh yeah, I knew you were running some heavy iron.."


Yes, LOL Steve. Now, do any other OTs here remember Arnold. W2HCW from "Lung Island, New York" with that full sized 3-el on 75?  "Doubleya Two Hotel Charlie Whiskey". He'd be working pileups of EUs and UAs...I couldn't hear a single one of them.

And who was Walt, AMer out of W4 -Land? Supposedly bolted big tube sockets to the interior aluminum wall of a mobile home?

Don?

Probably WA8AHB, later W8AHB, still in the callbook listed to Ann Arbor.

He was sort of a single-subject QSO like Irb, W2VJZ, but instead of the Constitution, Jack's theme was grievances against Nikola Tesla.

Hi, Paul. How the heck are you doing?

Yo Bill !
Been thinking about you.  Text me a phone number and UTC time to call you tmrw.
(QSL)

You must be thinking of Walt, WB4OAE, Hickory KY.  He ran a pair of 833As modulated by another pair.  Kind of a haywire setup inside his mobile home ham shack, which he had pulled in for the purpose next to his house. It was an open-frame rig built up with angle iron and plywood.  No panels; everything was bread boarded and out in the open.  I don't recall anything bolted to the wall. After his wife and then a couple of months later his dog died, he went kind of crazy.

Yeah damn near. 12 buttons and 400,000 functions. It's like training for a prize fight.

(http://zachdechant.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/rocky-pulling-sled.png)

The problem is beyond the form factor which is bad enough. Those belts can come apart.

That's Chuck and Tom's buddy. I have some audio I will post later today or tomorrow.

In a raspy, Long Island Arnold accent:    "W - 2.........  Honolulu  -  California -  Worrssshinton"

AFAIK, Arnold was the first one on the east coast to put up a full-size 75M rotary Yagi .

T

That's the guy Paul, I worked him once around 2001 or 02.

Arnold was who I was trying to figure out.  I believe his antenna was a strengthened KLM or a M Squared after they bought KLM. Ahrnuld had the over water location but couldnt compete with Chucks ASL, his ridge was perfectly located for gain enhancement in the far field and low angles. Powerwise they were close enough that it didnt matter.

That guttural Brooklyn Jewish accent was dripping with arrogance.

 W8AHB,  Jack worshiped Nikola to the bone. He hated Thomas Edison in a direct inverse proportion. Educators cannot seem to get around Edison's meager schooling . I bet they are indoctrinated with bashing points as a part of their degree .

It's interesting that Arnold basically inspired Chuck to put up his 3el KLM 75M Yagi. Chuck took a trip to LI and Arnold picked him up in a limo and whisked him off to his QTH. Arnold had up one of those driven cell, 4el KLM jobs. The boom snapped during an ice storm the SAME week that Chuck had his new 3el operational. So they never really had a chance to do a 1:1 comparison.  Afterwards Arnold had up a single 75M NE loop on his tall tower and a second one at right angles to SE.

Over years of pecker matching, I found my best 75M Yagi system (7 el wire Yagi at 130') was about par with Chuck into Eu and we were both about 5db stronger than Arnold. This was due to Arnold's missing Yagi, I'm sure. When you have a good loacation, run a Yagi and competitive power, there's not much more you can do - and the signals get very close to one another. The only variance becomes cornditions, audio and of course, reputation. At the time, the call "WA1EKV" and "W2HCW" were both worth a few db... ;D  Being the new kid on the block (1986) I had rough sledding amongst these tall ships despite doing everything I could to compete.

T

Arnold was the 80 meter DX window PIG. Many a morning I would get up early just to listen to him yak about nothing killing the whole opening.
I called him a pig every chance I got. He thought nothing of opening up right on top of a QSO so he could pig his way on.
He was and is worm crap

Don't hold back, Frank. Tell us how you REALLY feel! ;D

Get up at 4:30
Power up the big rig
All set for the 4:45 opening to JA land
Here comes the pig to yak with the same VK every friggen morning

I could often work thru him and work JA's or anyone else where the NW Beverage dropped Arnold way down and most VK's into the noise. I was running a "loaner" LK-800 QRO model that was within a few dB of him. I almost cried when I had to give the amp back to Denny Had >:(

I was running stacked inverted vees.

The DX Window has more than one frequency.