For the love of god, QRL (the frequency is in use)! QSY (change frequency)!
This weekend the CQ WPX RTTY contest is in full swing and so, naturally, all the rule breakers and ignorant operators are out in force.
It is frustrating using low-power weak signal modes during a contest because of the overwhelming ignorance of many contest operators. You see, in most HF bands, JT65-A operating can be found at the *.076MHz range. We typically operate at or below the noise floor, so I could understand if operators do not always hear a station prior to transmitting, however, WE ARE STILL THERE!! And likely have been offering 2-way exchanges BEFORE the alligators start their lower-appendage waving.
What would help us low-power guys would be for the contest panel to penalize operators for walking on top of well established “standard” frequencies such as that of the JT65 and QRSS crowd. Add a rule which forbids conducting your contest QSO on these established frequencies and then deduct a large number of points when operators submit logs where they tried to make a contact on the forbidden frequencies (eg. 7.076-7.079 MHz to allow a single side-band width of operating room). Such a measure should wake people up – or at the very least, punish poor operating practices.
This is an opportunity to inform people as well as to encourage respectful operating practices. Too bad the contest organizers even need to be told this …
Good afternoon, I too ran into some troubles with the RTTY contesters. I was trying to do some WSPR and it was just not working out as some op’s where in the contest right on top of me. I then spun the VFO over to the QRP 20m portion. I am a QRP station at 5 watts or much less. I found RTTY working right on 14.060 so it was time to shut the rig off and do some Elecraft kit building
Yeah, it seems that there certainly is a large proportion of amateur radio solely fixated on running absurd power levels to effectively spam the air-waves with childish behaviour – all in the name of “emergency preparedness”.
I’d like to see more people hang from their beams for violating their operating privileges (think QRO).
I think my next antenna project will be WARC oriented just to avoid these cretins. Its a real shame that many people tend to operate on the “standard” bands however.
PS: I like your PSK stripe idea! ‘Tis true that mark and space should be sufficiently spaced to allow their QSO to continue while carrying on your own in PSK land. I’ll give that a shot some time!
I swear that RTTY contesters are mostly little kids that run up to their parents when the parent is busy stanching arterial bleeding and start shouting “daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy! daddy!”… then daddy relents and the
kidcontester asks “can I have a cookie?” Very little is worse for the digital operator than a TARA weekend.I’ve taken to putting my PSK stripe right up the middle of their RTTY goalposts. Shouldn’t affect their QSO, and makes use of the wasted bandwidth 🙂
Contesting is why I spend a lot of time in the WARC bands.