The AM Forum

wtf.  Last night there was the (ab)normal roundtable around 3885.  Several of you heard my valiant on the air (yeah).  As I was signing off I kept listening.  Around 11 or so, some slop started just below everyone.   CQ CQ CQ  UR 59 agn.....A-Holes.  Why must slop alway bother ongoing QM QSOs.  We, AMers, pretty much stay around the same watering hole.  Why is it that sloppers feel that they must interfere?  I simply do not understand.  75/80M is a huge band.  Go somewhere else.  This just annoys the piss out of me.  We stay in 15kc of 75M and they have the other 385KC.  With all the newer rigs doing auto-notch, they can notch out multiple carriers and continue being jackasses.

Rant over

Tom - AB3FL

Why?  Why stay in the same place, and perpetuate the battle?


Yes.  Yes it is, and anywhere that phone operation is allowed, AM operation is allowed.  There is no magic 'window' where only AM should be... thats a myth that has never existed in reality.  3.885 is merely the 'Calling Frequency' for AM on 75m.  There's the whole, big, 'rest of the band' to go wander around in.  EVery AM'ers motto should be
"Have VFO - Will Travel!"


Why?

I do agree that AM IS allowed anywhere that phone is allowed.  I think AMers stay around 3885 as a courtesy to others.  AM does use more bandwidth than slopbucket.  It just seems like slopbucketers have nothing better to do than bother AMers

Tom - AB3FL

Geoff said:
Because after a while you get tired of being a doormat and its time to make a stand! Who's to say that where you go the same thing will happen? Unless you are a ham and have been living in an 'anechoic chamber,' its pretty much common knowledge where the AMers congregate. Anyone that 'cozies', (for lack of better words) up to an ongoing AM QSO is hell bent on intentionally QRMing them. Just my 5¢ worth.

Amen!

Doesn't much matter if you're running AM, SSB, FM, RTTY, PSK  etc, etc.

During a contest someone else will fire up too close to you, and cause interference and headaches...

It's not an "AM thing".
Just the way it is.

Doesn't even have to be a contest on... just the ratio of inconsiderate idiots is higher during a contest.

Because when you're using AM, you are occupying 3 or more times the bandwidth than SSB, so that's <3 times more likely you'll get interfered with !

 :D

Bruce tells the truth.  Corntesters don't even have any regard for each other unless they haven't worked each other for that particular contest.  Talk about testosterone selfishness!

Ain't that the truth

I have two responses:

The activity of contesting uses far more spectrum than a roundtable QSO on AM.

The "courtesy" you mention is seldom reciprocated by people using incompatible modes and activities.

---

In the past ten years or so, Tom, I've observed enough friction to conclude there is plenty of spacing available on 80 and 40 meters to improve the enjoyment of an AM QSO.  For those of us on AM, we have a responsibility and the regulatory support to operate anywhere there is a clear spot on the dial in the "phone" portion of the band.

The FCC a couple years ago re-apportioned the sub-bands on 80 and 40 meters to more accurately reflect levels of "phone" activity. If we now fail to distribute our activity across the allocated phone segments, we have no one to blame but ourselves when congestion undercuts conditions.  

People on incompatible modes who cause interference no longer have the excuse that they were unaware or unfamiliar with AM activity on 80 and 40 meters.  The tremendous growth in our part of the hobby outpaces that of digital modes on HF, and our scheduled events often outdraw the number of participants you see listed in the logbook tallies for other modes published in QST magazine.

When you look at daily activity,  the hours of air time and the number of stations across the country taken together mean the AM Community has the largest regular presence on 80 and 40 meters of any group, net, or other identifiable association of operators.

This circumstance alone should convince AMers they have the basis to operate anywhere in the phone bands that their license allows. It raises our stature to the same sense of entitlement that contesters, Dog-Xray people, and CW buffs use to justify their use of spectrum.

We should settle for nothing less than any other mode or activity.

Please keep in mind any contester who would do that is probably not very smart.

There are plenty of contesters who would never think of wasting time on a frequency used by yay yammerers.

Painting all these people with one brush isn't accurate.

Here's why ssb corntesters gets so close to AMers...  (for better or worse)

1) They lack knowledge concerning the bandwidth required for peaceful AM operation and the amount of interference they create to AMers when corntesting close-in.  They assume all voice signals are ssb - and the norm in corntests is to get as close as 2kc to each other. Some are using 1.8khz filters.  The bands are so noisy with QRO ssb activity, they fail to identify AM sidebands extending out as a warning to stay back.

2) Using a good ricebox receiver, an ssb station can listen 3kc below a loud AM station (on LSB) and have little interference due to the tremendous opposite sideband suppression of their filter system.  There is no carrier tone, just an AM sideband that they can easily work through. Listen sometime on your own ssb receiver and see.

3) Attitude - Adjacent neighbor courtesy is thrown out the window during corntests. It's get in and make the contacts regardless of who is near you. If you can operate and hear the other station, anywhere is fair game.

We may not agree with it, but that's how it is.


One RX solution is to use an SDR (SoftRock, etc) that lets us hear only one AM sideband - the sideband that is farthest away from the ssb offender is chosen to listen to.      

T

I don't completely buy it, Tom.

Does the "DX Window" get just as overrun as the rest of the band during a contest?

Of course I don't agree with it, Paul.  I'm trying to imagine contesting through the biased eyes of a corntester when I say "anywhere is fair game."

And yes, the 75M DX window was bedlam this weekend.  No one could work conventional DX even if they wanted to.  What's the solution? It's an age old question.

Personally, I don't participate, but corntesting doesn't bother me at all. I use my filters, play in the quieter areas and turn up the power. Haven't had a conflict with one in years.

T

You cant beat cubic inches either...big always wins ::)

What were QuaRMtesters doing up on 3885 anyway?  I thought this weekend's QuaRMtest was some kind of world-wide DX affair, so I would have expected them to have been hanging out down lower in the band, below 3800, since outside of Region 2 (the Americas) the ham band stops at 3800.

40m was pretty much wiped out all the way down to 7050 or so.  Some of the QuaRMtesters  were calling CQ up in 7175-7200, but announcing that they were listening in the vicinity of 7050-70, wasting two voice channels instead of one, and naturally not listening on the channel they were transmitting on.

And Paul, the FCC a few years ago did re-apportion the sub-bands on 80m to more accurately reflect levels of "phone" activity, but they fell short on 40m.  For one thing, the expansion on 40m was based on the situation that existed then, when broadcasters wiped out everything above 7100, and the entire amateur band in many parts of the world was limited to 7000-7100.  With (most) broadcasters now moved above 7200, hams in other parts of the world now have full access to 7000-7200.  One could say that's likewise the de facto band in N. America due to the continued broadcast QRM, except during a few daylight hours when skip is short and no transcontinental propagation exists, which allows us to use 7200-7300 in the morning and early afternoon for regional and sometimes local contacts.

Hams in the lower 48 are still relegated to the back of the 40m bus, allowed to use phone in only 75 kc/s of the de facto 200 kc/s of band, while CW and much of the digital stuff stays below about 7060, leaving only a handful of CW and digital stations and a few foreign SSB signals between 7075 and 7125.  That segment is usually almost devoid of activity while 7000-7060 and 7125-7200 may be highly congested to the point that it is difficult to find a clear spot.

Now that most broadcasting is gone from the 7.1-7.2 segment, the special privilege enjoyed by US hams in Alaska, Hawaii and overseas territories like Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands and Guam to operate phone in 7075-7100 no longer serves any useful purpose.  Phone  should be allowed in at least half of the de facto band, all the way from 7.1-7.2, and I would be happy to see the phone band expanded at least down to 7075. The CW community seems adamantly opposed to any further expansion of the phone band, despite the fact that the CW band is so lightly used between 7060 and 7125. Even during major CW QuaRMtests, there is little CW activity to be heard above 7080.

As a compromise, to better reflect present usage since the broadcasters moved off 7.1-7.2, I would propose that the special 7075-7100 phone segment for offshore US territory be relocated to 7100-7125, and the privilege to use it be extended to all US amateurs, regardless of where they reside.  

As far as AM operators feeling obligated to limit ourselves to the Ghetto between 3870 and 3890 as a "courtesy" to slopbucketeers, Bullsh¡t!  Remember, AM existed on the ham bands long before SSB was even heard of by most hams, mostly limited to commercial frequencies for overseas telephone calls prior to the development of transoceanic telephone cables. This reminds me of when money-hungry developers purchase farm land out in the country and build sub-divisions near a pre-existing, noisy airport or race track, and then as the new residents move in, they whine and complain about the noise that they should have known was already there.

Finally, I hear very few slopbucket signals on any of the phone bands narrow enough to pack three of them into the space occupied by one normal bandwidth AM signal.

The answers remain simple:

 - Restrict the number/duration of contests

 - Restrict participation to the General Class portion of the bands only. This not only provides access to virtually all hams who want to work the event while providing 'clean' portions of the bands for those who do not, it also provides incentive to upgrade for those who are General class.

Simple.  :)

Even better would be to restrict contesting to those areas that need more utilization, like VHF and above. Those are the frequencies most in threat of being sold off in the future. I seem to recall changes being made to the license structure back in the 90s exactly for this purpose. If it's serious enough to warrant that, surely it's serious enough to fill those frequencies will all contest activity.

Never going to happen. Contesting has been a staple of amateur radio activity since the beginning of time. Restricting the number of, the duration of, the restricted frequency operating range, etc. serves no purpose for the many, many amateurs, both domestically and internationally, who enjoy the virtues and fun of contesting, just to satisfy the minority of amateurs who P&M about contesting. Last night, above 3900 was virtually free of any contesting with lots of empty spaces to hold a QSO. Likewise 160, was void of many signals with lots of places to operate. WARC bands and 60 meters are always contest free, and when there's an HF contest, the VHF bands are contest free. If amateurs can't figure out how to QSY, and zero-beat each other,  to less occupied portions of amateur radio bands, I have no pity for them.


There are a number of VHF/UHF sponsored contests throughout the year and shorter duration "Sprints" by band also throughout the year. Best time to find lots of VHF/UHF activity, besides the occasional band opening, is during a VHF/UHF contest.

I had great fun last night operating 80 and 40 meters in the contest. Best fun I had since the last contest I operated in. The Flex is a marvel to use when contesting and DXing especially in the ability to view a good chunk of spectrum. Eye, hand, finger, ear coordination is a must. Definitely a lot more fun then the typical ramble...ramble....ramble QSO's.

Contests have not been a staple of amateur radio since the beginning of time or now. The reality is that only a very small minority of amateurs operate in any contests, let alone many. The consideration given contests is not congruent with their importance to the amateur population at large.

Any other activity that trashed the bands and displayed such poor operating practice, splattering signals and rampant use of illegal power would be decried by the ARRL and other self-important types. But these same groups turn a blind eye to this behavior in contesting, even to the point of not disqualifying stations who made contacts outside their frequency allotments. What a joke.

Aren't WARC bands immune from these events?  Maybe we should start building 17 meter plate modulated rigs.

True and a good idea. Unfortunately, no WARC bands replicate 160 or 80 meters.  :'(

I think there would be a better chance of getting the AM'ers to restrict their transmission lengths to under 10 minutes.  :-X It's just not possible.

My ATC (Navy ART-13) just about lives on 17M AM. Ive also operated the Viking II CDC there using an HP-606A as the VFO.

That's awesome Carl!  I could put my ricebox on 17m AM for now.  Not nearly as fun but I still love AM enough to do it.

I'm down with trying out some 17M AM too! I can throw the rice Oat-box (A K3 isn't technically a rice box  ;D) on 17M AM and give it a try with yall!

On the subject of the Corn-test... well... I have a confession...

I participated in this one (and the CW-DX contest a couple weeks back, and Field day for 5 years or so, and... ) and had a great time. Sure, it's not for everyone, but was a ton fun to me! I helped a new ham friend of mine get a 40M antenna up yesterday, and you should have seen his face when he worked his first DX station in a high-stress contest atmosphere. Priceless. But he's hooked, and it was fun for all involved!

And let's be honest... It's great to see the bands just bubbling away with activity, instead of the great swaths of barren spectrum we see on some of bands.

AM gods... please don't revoke my meager AM credentials for this confession!  ;)

What it all boils down to is this: Contesting is just another activity enjoyed by amateur radio operators - just like CW, or Data, or AM or slopbucket, or... and in my book, if an activity like contesting keeps people enjoying the hobby, then it's good in my book. Different strokes ya know!  :D

And if ya'll want to get back at the slopbucketeers you could just throw more AM contests...  ;D ;D ;D

I got an idea. My buddy Geoff, W5OMR with his 160 watts carrier 80M AM mobile could pay some visits to some of those guys who choose to run 10KW on 3878. Hell park in front of his house, and call CQ for hours and hours during a contest night... ;D Maybe if several offending stations are clustered together, get several birds with one stone...

Geoff, you up for that? :-)

Jim
WD5JKO

It's not the contests, it's the behavior of SOME (many) of the contestors that we are complaining about.  Honestly now!  When the AM Transmitter Rally or the Heavy Metal rally and other A.M. contest like events occured, I did NOT hear the intentional QRM'ing and stepping on like we do in just about all the other modes.  Maybe it's sheer numbers but the behavior is not just aggravating but it's technically ILLEGAL. 

I'm all about allowing all the aspects of ham radio to exist with attention and respect to other operators.  But during most contests, that attentive respect evaporates. 

We need a low frequency WARC band.... or give us five more "channels" on 60 meters for A.M. where no contests are allowed! THAT would be cool.

How true, it goes right back to the first trans Atlantic tests on spark. Can you imagine the bedlam from that?

You're kidding right? That was not anything like a modern day contest. Read the accounts. No points were awarded.

That's what 60m was supposed to be.  The FCC appeared to be going along with the idea of a real ham band in the vicinity of 5 mc/s. The debate had boiled down to details of how the new band would be structured: sub-bands or no sub-bands, power levels, modes allowed, etc.

It would not have been an internationally allocated ham band, but several other countries seemed to be interested.  I think this included Canada and  a couple of European countries.  Possibly VK and ZL too. If the new band had been created, it may well have been allocated internationally at the next WARC, becoming a new bona fide WARC band.

The main opponents, lobbying hard against any new amateur allocations anywhere in the HF spectrum, were Part 15 providers like Homeplug Alliance and BPL interests.  They didn't want to have to install further frequency notching in their garbage-spewing hash generators. They were hoping to pressure the FCC into giving unlicensed Part 15 devices priority over licensed services.  The Part 15 lobbyists had some success, by snuffing out the proposal to create a longwave amateur band in the vicinity of 150 kc/s, claiming it would threaten power line communications systems that electric utilities use to communicate and send control signals down major power line arteries, and thus create the danger of power outages.

The straw that broke the camel's back was 11SE01.  Suddenly, HF spectrum, which had been pretty much abandoned, took on strategic importance, and NTIA, which had initially approved the idea of the new ham band, suddenly decided that those frequencies were too valuable to release.

I suspect this may have been a smoke screen in the midst of the panic reaction to the events of that day, allowing NTIA to take advantage of the situation and renege on its initial nod to go ahead with the proposal.  This part of the HF spectrum is not exactly bustling with activity, and undoubtedly existing users could have shuffled frequencies a little to accommodate the proposed band, just as they did to allow broadcasters to shift upwards above the 40m band.  If the FCC can find room to allow WWCR to operate its splatter/distortion generator on multiple frequencies outside the internationally allocated short wave broadcast bands, surely room for the proposed new band could have been accommodated. By now, a decade after 11SE01, things should have settled down enough that a real ham band could be reconsidered, but Part 15 interests succeeded in getting their way and no further action is likely to be taken for a long time, if ever. Money talks.

5Mhz is a heavily used band for governmnet and non-government aeronautical mobil traffic.
It's interesting listening!

You might want to read this: FCC Proposes Changes to 60 Meters by Bill Cross: http://www.arrl.org/news/bill-cross-w3tn-presents-fcc-forum-at-2010-dayton-hamvention

And the NPRM: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-76A1.pdf

<<<They were hoping to pressure the FCC into giving unlicensed Part 15 devices priority over licensed services. >>>

That may not be over.  The last ARRL Board meeting drafted objectives vis a' vis the current Congress and objective 3 pertained to thwarting legislative efforts to diminish the rights and protections for licensed users over those of unlicensed users.  It seems therefore that lobbyists have moved on to Congress.

Much ado about nothing.  Changing one of the channel frequencies and upping the power level a little doesn't impress me much.

Nope, it changed along with the hobby as that grew along with technology, understanding propagation, etc, as it grew into the ARRL QSO Party, Sweepstakes, DX Contest, etc all in the 30's.

Considering that receivers were as broad as a barn door and drifted, transmitters were often just as unstable, AM QRM was really a nightmare in a contest and what happens today is no different in its impact to non contesters. Power went up, antennas got bigger but so did the equipment improve so more can share the same bandwidth that wasnt even conceivable back then.

Now you really are stretching it, using a word like share!  ;)

FCC doesn't need us bothering them with this crap.

If a contester opens up within the passband you're using ask him/her to please move.

Be prepared to work through bad band conditions and don't simply turn tail whenever some idiot trys to bully you.

Plus, the League's regulatory and legislative lobbyist, Dan Henderson, is the club's former contest department chief. Guess how HE feels about any boundaries? 

As I said before. Serious contesters don't waste time screwing around. When one of these fellows lights off while someone on AM is talking about what they did in 1956 it's usually a casual or clueless wannabe contester.

Dave you should really learn how "today" contesting is done.

There is no human involved.  

Radios look for carriers and auto-tune to a frequency near us.  Automated callouts then proceed. Voice recognition and a storage-and-retrieval system tallies the contacts with other like-minded robot stations.  Licensed operator comes back Sunday night, and a printout of the "score" is awaiting them on the printer.

PDF has already been sent to the ARRL.

These are facts.

Steve, I happened to be reading the Feb 1940 QST this morning and came across the rules for the 12th DX Competition as it was called then. I'll let others do the math as to what year it started.

It also announced a rule change to stimulate more DX activity which was to allow them to count US states as multipliers.

As I said earlier contests have been around longer than anyone on here can remember and someone was always whining about QRM. just as they do today. Dont expect anything to change.

In most QuaRMtests in recent years, activity has dropped off to the point that you can still find empty spots in the band, particularly at the high end. The past few years, I hardly even noticed what used to be one of most obnoxious of QuaRMtests, the Penisylvania QSO Pharty, that it was even on.

One notable exception this year was the CQ 160m Slopbucket QuaRMtest.  They literally occupied the band all the way from 1.8 to 2.0, and some of the ops very aggressively tried to shove any non-QuaRMtester off the band.

I have found the "strap softly and turn up the wick" tactic to work very well. A serious QuaRMtester is wasting precious five-nines arguing with someone over who owns a frequency, and will just QSY so he can continue answering or calling his automated CQs.

My point was and still is that none of what you say makes it right. Long standing bad behavior does not and never will justify continued bad behavior. I don't even consider this line a legitimate argument in favor of contesting. It contains several fallacies - an appeal to tradition which is a fallacy of relevance, a bandwagon fallacy and the Tu Quoque fallacy, a common fallacy of presumption.

You'll have to do better OM.

Bovine excrement....we can continue this at Nearfest 8)

I'll buy you a beer.  :)

He has to show up, first.  ;)

I quit drinking 10 years ago....it improved my disposition ;D


KMA Todd :o  I'll be there if Im breathing even if its just to see what disguise Tom will be in :D

LOL. And it's always the highlight of the show.

Not EZ this year, glasshoppa.  I buy five Groucho glasses/mustaches -  one for HUZ, PJP, GFZ, ETP and me.   You have 20% chance of finding Vu.

T

I wasn't going to reply, but this "all contesters are QRMtesters, and therefore all contesers are GARBAGE operators" is one of the reasons why I have not been active on the board (along with the mentality many AMers seem to have that unless you're armchair copy, and running 300 watts of carrier, you're too hard to hold a QSO with).

I remember a couple of years back when some of you guys got Mark, K3MSB revved up over this issue, and I think Mark's a great guy (whom I've chatted with more than a few times on 6m, 10m, AND during contests).  For the last time, YES, some contesters are rude.  So are a few AMers, SSTVers, etc.  It's human nature.  It's almost like playing in a band (of which I've been in more than a few of them) - sooner or later, you're going to run into jerks, flakes, etc.  Cut it out!  I don't beat up on you guys who have your ampgasm QSOs about circuits that were found in a 1936 copy of R9 (where you spend 20 mintes or more waxing poetic about mod iron choices for the circuit), have a phobia about using anything other than triodes, or have the occasional chat about getting stoned on awesome weed back in the 60s or 70s.  So QUIT knocking on me for contesting!

'Nuff said,
Ellen - AF9J
Working her umpteenth Saturday in a row, and I'm salaried (no OT for me)

Ellen said:
I don't think anyone 'knocked on you' for corntesting. However it seems that an overwhelming majority of corntester are jerk, embiciles, (insert any other ill conceived adjective here). Just as you pointed out about the AM community having its share of the same, I can say and I'll hold you to it, that it isn't an overwhelming majority. Not even close!

There is a big difference between being in a competitive situation compared to one populated by mostly senile old coots...myself excluded from the senile part ;D

Carl

So you stay off the board because of a few people who are vocal about not liking all contesters.

Isn't that grouping everyone on the board together exactly like some do with contesters?

AM is but one facet of amateur radio, and AM itself is multi-faceted.

Some, but not all the facets of AM include: audio quality, technical experimentation, vintage/historical, restoration, QRO/QRP, class-E and other state-of-the-art technology, homebrewing, etc.

To each his or her own; there is plenty of room on the bands for every interest.

IMO, some of the things that cause people to put down QuaRMtesting include rude operators who display no consideration towards non-participants and think they OWN the band during a contest weekend, the fact that a QuaRMtest may wipe out an ENTIRE BAND for an entire weekend, not to mention those silly bogus "five-nine" signal reports everyone gives everyone else even when they can barely dig the other station out of the noise.

Personally I would find working station after station just to get a callsign and state and exchange bogus signal reports about as exciting as one of those minimum wage assembly-line jobs where you sit all day screwing together identical sets of the same two widgets before passing them on down the line.

The  last contest I participated in was in about 1962 or 63 when I joined in CQ's 160m CW contest. The first year I won the top score for TN (but I was one of only about 3 participants in the whole state).  The following year I was all set to go, and there was some serious  competition that year.  I started out with a bang and went strong for about 2 hours, then it suddenly occurred to me, "Why in hell am I doing this?" I didn't find it particularly enjoyable and it was too much like working at a job to spend an entire weekend doing.  So I just shut the rig off and did something else for the rest of the weekend.

I have never worked a QuaRMtest since, except that sometimes during a 160m CW contest I will try to work a few stations between 11AM and 1 PM just to see how far I can work out at high noon.  My best DX was NJ right at noontime. Whenever I do this, I always give HONEST RST reports and expect the same, but I nearly always get 599 even when I know the other station is barely reading me.

A contest might serve a useful purpose if everyone gave everyone else honest reports, since a whole weekend and hundreds of contacts and sig reports would provide enough statistical data to give you a real idea of just how well you are (or not) getting out in different directions and distances, and to different regions of the country.

Actually, Sweepstakes is better than many of the others in this respect.  They have eliminated the signal report in the exchange, but you have to actually send and receive a set of data to make a valid contact, not just ID the other station. This requires a little skill beyond mindlessly copying down call signs.

The Icom video promoting stomping on ragchewers has since been removed from their site, but here's an old thread discussing an unpleasant experience I had

http://amfone.net/Amforum/index.php?topic=7149.0

I actually like the Sweepstakes.  It's the only contest that really requires strategy, an understanding of propagation, and almost requires multiband operation to do well instead of just camping out bellering "CQ Contest".  The Pennsylvania QSO party for some reason attracts the worst and most selfish ops of any contest.

I had thought that contest operations were originally organized to help study propagation by allowing as much data to be collected as possible in a reasonable time, with relatively consistent conditions.

OK, I'm settled down.  I owe you guys an apology.  But, it just bothers me, when people are painted with a broad brush.  It's no different than when people beat up on AM for being outmoded, a waste of spectrum space, you're caught in the past, etc. (and I've taken flak on more than a few occasions for taking people who made those statements on other forums to task for the statements).  But, I will admit, that there is an anti-cotesting bias I have seen on this board for a long time.  And seeing rants about contests, get as old as the constant rants I see on one online guitar forum, about how Gibson guitars are garbage.  It used to also be that way here with regards to low power and QRP operating (admit it, I've seen a few of you comment on how life is too short for QRP).  I find it very heartening that the New England crowd has a PW net.  If I had better antennas, I wouldn't mind running a midwest version of this.

I like contests, but I don't live for them.  I've had plenty of times, where I've done other things, because I didn't care to contest (unlike certain contesters I know, who devote their radio time to nothing but contesting). 

My Aologies,
Ellen - AF9J

The only thing annoying about contests is the saturation of the band at times.
Because AM is used almost exclusively here, the necessary bandwidth makes it difficult to find a clear frequency for preferred activities during a contest.
Firing up between a contester's QSOs on the same frequency that the contester has just used to call "CQ Contest" is the same level of 'wrong' as firing up on an existing QSO.
The number of 'national/global'-reaching contests, which can and do plug up the bands, should be voluntarily coordinated and well-limited so that one does not find the bands filled up with contests more than 50% of the time.

It's not about contests or contesters. It's most certainly not about ALL contesters. It's about bad behavior and heinous operating practices being condoned in the name of contests. Don't confuse the two.