[CW] Where are all the 80 meter CW ops?

[Buck - N4PGW]

You quoted someone else quoted in my message..

 

N4PGW

 

 

  _____  

From: N2EY at aol.com [mailto:N2EY at aol.com] 
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2005 6:53 AM
To: n4pgw-list1 at towncorp.net; k4kyv at hotmail.com; cw at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [CW] Where are all the 80 meter CW ops?

 

In a message dated 6/20/05 9:45:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time, n4pgw-list1 at xxx





> >These days, 80m CW activity is thin on the ground,
> >even in winter.
> 
> Use it or lose it!




Well, I just got back from FD. Used my K2 and a dipole, operating 80/40 CW
only. Made 170+ QSOs in a few hours of casual operating. About 1/3 on 80
meters and 2/3 on 40. 

It was great to hear 80 CW so full of signals, but there was room for more.




> How can we justify reserving 50% of the band for cw and digital modes if
> the activity is not there?
> 
> Besides the amateur phone operators, I suspect there are non-amateur
> interests drooling over all those unused frequencies on 80m








I have no objection to extending the voice band on 80 meters a bit.  80
meters is a huge amount of real-estate.  The CW portion is larger than
several ham bands, however, the voice portion is overcrowded.  Of course,
the CW portion is truly from 3.5 to 4 MHz :).  



Check out what Riley Hollingsworth had to say a few years back, in a speech
at Dayton:

"Always keep in mind that we are part of a world community. There are third
world countries that would love to have 75 Meters or a portion of 75 Meters
for their telephone company for local telephone service. Then they wouldn't
have to give tens of millions of dollars to a contractor to have them come
in and set it up. Each country at these ITU meetings has one vote - just
like we do. Our people that go to these ITU meetings will tell us that it's
often a personal embarassment to them when these countries play back tapes
of what they hear on 75 and 20 Meters in the American amateur bands. They
say, 'You want to expand the bands for amateurs for this type of service?' "

"It puts them in a very difficult position when they have to defend examples
of conduct that other countries hear. A lot of these countries don't like
America anyway and when they think of the money that auctions for sprectrum
would bring - sometimes it's 10, 20 or 40 times their gross national
product. Like it or not, we're part of a world community."

The sorts of behavior cited are not because of overcrowding. And they're
almost all done using voice modes, not CW/digital modes. 

80 meters is probably too




unstable for most computer digital modes.  




Just the opposite! The colorburst PSK31 watering hole is proof of that.

73 de Jim, N2EY