[Boatanchors] The Silence of the Bands.

[howard holden]

Commenting on Roger, no digital here, and I work my share of DX even though I'm not a DX hound. Most of it worked with a variety of BA and old mil rigs, no DX clusters etc. Actually with the older stuff it's easy because you can "up" 3-4-5 Kc or whatever. The atmosphere doesn't care whether your signal is generated by a 21st century gizmo or a 70+ year old piece of iron, and most decent receivers will pick up the DX just fine. It's always a hoot when I bag a new one.

What gets me is when I hear some say "I'm only running a KW, and the antenna is just a two element yagi (on 40). I work with nothing higher than a 13 ft high end fed wire, and most of my antennas are 6-7 ft high, power levels 20 to 100W or so.

On Dave's comments on CW, when I get to the point of not being able to send with a real key, I'd certainly go with a keyboard, as long as I can get it to play with my old iron. And Dave, most people who use a keyboard forget to abbreviate, it's very easy to tell when someone is using one. But at least they're on CW.........

73, Howie WB2AWQ


On 9/16/2017 9:12 AM, Mark K3MSB wrote:

Digital modes have their pros and cons.

The pros are they are an advancement in the state of the art of
communications technology, and can be a great help to those living in
apartments or areas with very restrictive antenna availability (thus
restrictive power).

The cons are they require very little skill and ability to use, therefore
achievements made with those modes are shallow. Those that attain such
shallow achievements want the same respect as those that use modes that
require skill and effort. To paraphrase the old E. F. Hutton commercial: “I
got my DX awards the old fashioned way – I earned them”.

Yes, the above are my subjective opinions; feel free to disagree or add as
you'd like.

To comment on Rodger's comments about Dxing, In my opinion, the real
problem with the digital modes is they are mixed in with the non-digital
modes for single band DXCC purposes.

I have 255 countries on 80M and 123 on 160 meters. I used CW for all of
them and it's taken years of effort, learning about and implementing RX
antennas etc. Effort and skill went into those achievements.