[Elecraft] 6M CW

[David Yarnes]

I understand how Jim and Ken feel.  However, I find myself 
on both sides of the fence.  Sometimes I get antsy wanting 
to work a particular grid square, but other times I get into 
a longer exchange--maybe the other station is in a location 
of particular interest, or whatever.  Of course, not many 
folks are that hungry for my grid square, but I suppose they 
may be hungry for the other person's grid square.  Thing is, 
though, not everyone (me included) is knocking themselves 
out trying to grab "all" the grid squares.  I save that 
approach for the contests usually.  Different folks have 
different ways of enjoying the opening, and a little 
chit-chat may be how they do it.  So, maybe we all just need 
to take a deep breath.

Jim's absolutely right about the CW portion of the band. 
It's usually "all business" down there, and lots of fun too. 
Weak signals are much easier to grab, etc.  My biggest 
complaint about the CW "portion" is that we seemed to be 
squeezed into a fairly narrow segment--50,090 to 50,100.  I 
realize we can go further up or down, but most don't seem to 
do it.  Also you start running into the beacons when you get 
lower, and when the band is good, there are a bunch of them 
coming in.  Nevertheless, I do go down lower sometimes, but 
my QSO rate drops because others don't seem to be listening 
down further.  Going up apparently "infringes" on a DX 
window for SSB.  Anyway, I think we should spread out some, 
downward probably, when the band gets good like this, 
beacons or no beacons.  That's probably heresy!  Of course, 
I'd also like to hear a lot more folks try CW too!

Dave W7AQK


-----------------------------------------------------
Jim Brown wrote:

On Mon, 5 Jul 2010 08:29:08 -0700 (PDT), Ken McGuire wrote:

>I was frustrated at how slow the chats were on SSB (FM was 
>even worse) -
>it seemed like they were wasting a perfectly good band 
>opening ragchewing

Yep. Same here. Often, an opening on any given path may be 
there only long
enough to exchange the grid and report. It's quite 
frustrating to wait to
call a station that was S9, then S7, then S5, then S3, then 
fumes, while
the time is filled with innanity.

>When I turned down to the CW portion of the band, it almost 
>sounded like
>a CW contest weekend.

Yes. I've gotten to the point that I spend most of my 6M 
efforts on CW,
only tuning up to the SSB portion of the band when nothing 
is happening on
CW. And thanks in part to the proliferation of K3s, there is 
a lot more CW
activity than there was only 5 years ago.

73, Jim K9YC