[Elecraft] K3/0

[Jim Brown]

On 1/16/2012 9:38 PM, Guy Olinger K2AV wrote:
> This hobby really needs fewer intolerant and narrow minded old men ...

I've missed this thread, which has obviously gone on for quite a while.  
But I SURE DO AGREE with this statement, except that I would change one 
word -- This WORLD really needs . . .  .

I've operated from a Chicago city lot with wires and an S7 noise level, 
from a couple of west coast super stations, from a damn nice station in 
PJ4, and from my own station in Nor California that is getting to be 
pretty nice.  I've run QRP in contests, and I've run legal power.  In 
every situation I've had fun, but I've had the most fun in the stations 
I've built myself (with considerable help from friends).  For a short 
time I had a lease on a mountain-top QTH that I hoped to develop, 
perhaps even remotely operated, but the realities of cost set in, and I 
gave up the lease.  From experience, I can say that operating from a 
mountaintop can be good for another 10dB or more on the HF bands, and 
the noise levels are often quite low too.

With all of this experience, I would be the LAST to begrudge a guy who 
lives in the city, or in a small place where antennas are limited and/or 
the nose is high, the opportunity to compete with a remote station he 
has built himself -- indeed, I would applaud him for it! Anyone who 
thinks it's easy should talk to some who has done it -- like K6VVA, a 
serious contester and expeditioner who has been working on developing 
his for nearly three years now. Remote control of a rig is a tiny 
fraction of the problem, although in a remote site you may also have to 
build the communications link (K6VVA did). There's also the matter of 
building a shack, building a power system, building an antenna farm (and 
it's seriously WINDY on mountain tops), building a switching system and 
a control system for it, even building a road to get to it and buying 
snow vehicles to get to it during contest season.

As to cheating -- I include in that category a guy who starts working 
DXCC at a QTH on one coast, then moves 2,000 - 3,000 miles (CO and NC, 
or CA and NY), still within the US, and counts the QSOs he has made from 
both locations for ANY award, including DXCC. or operates at a QTH 
across the country to make a QSO that he adds to his award totals. 
Anyone who has operated from locations 2,000 miles apart KNOWS in his 
heart he's cheating, even if the stupid ARRL DXCC rules say it's OK. I 
didn't start over when I moved from WV to OH to IL, because the 
distances were short enough that it didn't change the difficulty of 
working any given country, but I DID when I moved to CA.

Like the man said -- it's between you and your conscience. And mine is 
clean.

73, Jim K9YC