AM Rally comments

[K8DI]

Some observations I wanted to share.

One, the bands I checked were way busier than the last couple years.

Two, here in the upper midwest, Saturday's Minnesota QSO party did cause some fiddling with the tuning and bandwidth, at times I received AM on USB to avoid the interference.

Three, I made more contacts, and got unsolicited reports via email from some people I could not hear through the noise.

Four, it was nice to hear W1AW activated by Sierra, although I get the feeling it wasn't a sanctioned participation. He had some issues with his setup; but he was putting out a strong signal and made plenty of contacts.
      Edited to clarify and add: I've learned that Sierra's personal call is W5DX, and she did a great job of activating W1AW from their lab. My apologies for the mis-identification.

Five, my RCA purred nicely on 40m all weekend. I ran it on low (330w carrier) with no issue getting out.

Six, I hate the noise floor at my QTH, 80m is unusable at S9+20 noise, 40m at S5-9 meant I could only copy strong signals.  I heard quite a few stations I could get bits and pieces of but not contact. I apologize to anyone I stepped on that I could not hear.

Seven, and the real thing I wanted to share:  If you and a buddy are going to hold court on a frequency, please at least occasionally leave enough time between transmissions to hear a calling station. After an hour of listening to breaks lasting a second or two, and making calls (dropping in callsign) only to hear the other station halfway through a sentence, I just gave up. You had nice signals, many heard them, only some worked you, but many more could have.  

All in all, I enjoyed the event, even with the frustrations. I'm hoping to enjoy it more, with fewer frustrations, in the future, with help from you.

Ed

[w9jsw]

I did not participate this year due to family issues but did listen in a bit.

Two items of note -

It seems that the bands were not cooperative. Even using my beverage antenna, which is usually quiet, there was LOTS of QRM.

What is it with these wide buckshotting signals? I saw more than a few that were well beyond +/-5kc that were buckshotting 10-20kc farther. Not a good showing for the AM community with respect to the other modes. With the advent of online SDRs, folks really need to take a look at their signals. Creating noise +/- 30kc is not acceptable. Something is wrong that needs to be resolved with those rigs. A D104 with a properly tuned rig will not cause that sort of noise.

My 2 cents...

John

[W3SLK]

W9JSW said:

What is it with these wide buckshotting signals? I saw more than a few that were well beyond +/-5kc that were buckshotting 10-20kc farther. Not a good showing for the AM community with respect to the other modes. With the advent of online SDRs, folks really need to take a look at their signals. Creating noise +/- 30kc is not acceptable. Something is wrong that needs to be resolved with those rigs. A D104 with a properly tuned rig will not cause that sort of noise.

I heard more 'wide-band' slopbucket, (don't know if it was intentional or not). By the sounds of it, the rally was a pleasant success.
K8DI said:

Seven, and the real thing I wanted to share:  If you and a buddy are going to hold court on a frequency, please at least occasionally leave enough time between transmissions to hear a calling station. After an hour of listening to breaks lasting a second or two, and making calls (dropping in callsign) only to hear the other station halfway through a sentence, I just gave up. You had nice signals, many heard them, only some worked you, but many more could have.

 
Ed, I'm not a fan of break-in QSO's but have on occasion been known to participate in them. However, during the event on 160M Sat. night, like I usually do, I will 'drag my feet' in case there's another station wanting to break in.

[N1BCG]

I like the idea of posting post-event comments as some could be helpful for future planning.

As for observations in the northeast, at one point on Friday night there were five AM signals in a row on 20M... I've never heard that before. 10M opportunities presented themselves on Saturday in the form of three sets of carriers side by side around 29MHz.

Saturday night was epic on 75 and 40M with two adjacent pileups (one featured W1AW) and ops taking turns exchanging contacts. Mark (G0DJQ) in Derbyshire England operated AM for the first time on Sunday morning. He was signal was an impressive S9+10.

In all I heard at least a half dozen ops report their first AM contacts.

[kb3ouk]

I did not participate this year due to family issues but did listen in a bit.

Two items of note -

It seems that the bands were not cooperative. Even using my beverage antenna, which is usually quiet, there was LOTS of QRM.

What is it with these wide buckshotting signals? I saw more than a few that were well beyond +/-5kc that were buckshotting 10-20kc farther. Not a good showing for the AM community with respect to the other modes. With the advent of online SDRs, folks really need to take a look at their signals. Creating noise +/- 30kc is not acceptable. Something is wrong that needs to be resolved with those rigs. A D104 with a properly tuned rig will not cause that sort of noise.

My 2 cents...

John

Sibilance. There were at least 3 stations in particular that were extremely bad for it, every sss was at least 20 kc wide. And a fourth station that is usually wide but either narrowed up his audio or was not overdriving his audio was actually running a fairly reasonable bandwidth for once.

[K8DI]

K8DI said:

Seven, and the real thing I wanted to share:  If you and a buddy are going to hold court on a frequency, please at least occasionally leave enough time between transmissions to hear a calling station. After an hour of listening to breaks lasting a second or two, and making calls (dropping in callsign) only to hear the other station halfway through a sentence, I just gave up. You had nice signals, many heard them, only some worked you, but many more could have.

 
Ed, I'm not a fan of break-in QSO's but have on occasion been known to participate in them. However, during the event on 160M Sat. night, like I usually do, I will 'drag my feet' in case there's another station wanting to break in.

Mike, I get that a couple/few friends meeting on air may not want to talk to others, but that doesnt play well if they’re sitting on the calling frequency during an event for several hours. I usually just listen when I come across a tight knit group, but I’d ask they consider the circumstances during the Rally or any event.

As a side note, at another point/not part of the above, I heard you and recognized the call from here, too, but you were ending with saying you had to step away for a bit. I didn’t call out, though because you were headed out.

Ed

[KD1SH]

   I noted the same thing—Rally participation seemed excellent this year. I only worked 75m, 40m, 10m and 6m, so I can't speak about the other bands.
   Sierra Harrop, (actual call W5DX) by the way, is a girl. Great to hear the League on the air again, but yes, I agree, there was something a bit wonky about the setup on the Flex. She did take a break and make some changes later on in the Rally, though, and it sounded better, though not up to SDR audio standards.
  And your 7th observation—an emphatic yes! I got into a couple of groups where several operators, despite being long-time, experienced hams, employed what I refer to as "single pole double-throw keying," where you can imagine said switch being connected to each of their PTT's, allowing instantaneous switching between stations, leaving not a gnat's whisker in between, and all the while these very same operators are claiming to be Rally participants ready to hand out points.

Some observations I wanted to share.

One, the bands I checked were way busier than the last couple years.


Four, it was nice to hear W1AW activated by Sierra, although I get the feeling it wasn't a sanctioned participation. He had some issues with his setup; but he was putting out a strong signal and made plenty of contacts.


Seven, and the real thing I wanted to share:  If you and a buddy are going to hold court on a frequency, please at least occasionally leave enough time between transmissions to hear a calling station. After an hour of listening to breaks lasting a second or two, and making calls (dropping in callsign) only to hear the other station halfway through a sentence, I just gave up. You had nice signals, many heard them, only some worked you, but many more could have.  

Ed

[W1GFH]

I also noticed W1AW had some weird RF foldback/audio artifacts on their AM signal when I worked Sierra on 7275 on Sunday afternoon. Audio sample: https://sndup.net/txyp/

Maybe the 30 minute Old Buzzard transmissions were happening on 75 meters, but on 40 I didn't hear any. The AM stations were giving plenty of time between transmissions to listen for hams trying out AM for the first time with 25 watts or less. Bill KD1SH was particularly notable in making the effort to work these weak signal folks into the conversation. (We even heard Clark N1BCG break in with a less-than-S9 signal due to poor local propagation)

[KD1SH]

  Thanks, Joe. Great meeting you in the Rally. Especially seeing that I'm not particularly a big-gun station myself, I try to keep operations in the spirit of the Rally and try to get all the stations that I can hear involved, but I start to get uncomfortable when I begin to feel like I'm becoming the channel-master, and try to tactfully disengage at that point. Good fun all the way around; it's a great event.

I also noticed W1AW had some weird RF foldback/audio artifacts on their AM signal when I worked Sierra on 7275 on Sunday afternoon. Audio sample: https://sndup.net/txyp/

Maybe the 30 minute Old Buzzard transmissions were happening on 75 meters, but on 40 I didn't hear any. The AM stations were giving plenty of time between transmissions to listen for hams trying out AM for the first time with 25 watts or less. Bill KD1SH was particularly notable in making the effort to work these weak signal folks into the conversation. (We even heard Clark N1BCG break in with a less-than-S9 signal due to poor local propagation)