No subject

certainly going to have different impressions to different people. 
With many hundreds of thousands of ham operators, there will be many 
with the same opinions. Contesting certainly pushes the envelope for 
better technology and if you have a pileup on a rare DX, many of the 
same technological advances for contesting comes into play to wrangle 
a Q from that difficult DX station with a huge pileup. I chose the K3 
opposed to the Orion because of the attention Elecraft was giving at 
that time to the software in the K3 and I wanted the ability to hear 
a fly hiccup from 50 feet. Because of the attention to the Ham 
requests, Elecraft responded rapidly and I chose the K3 with all the 
whistles.

As to the OTHR, I can't say I have been aware of it at my QTH and 
that may be a result on none locally or maybe a lack of adequate 
antennae (all wire antennas hung in trees). But, my second radio was 
a Drake TR7 and the Russian "Woodpecker" was horrible back then and 
Drake had a modification to their noise blanker that was predictive 
for that and it worked wonders! 

It may be asking too much to think that Elecraft will improve their 
noise blanking functions to meet this need. I'm not an engineer and 
don't understand the limitations between difficult and impossible in 
this regard. I do know power line noise from Amtrak's catenary 
overhead power lines is killing my reception and there is nothing I 
can do with NB & NR settings in the K3 to mitigate it. Something more 
repetitive as OTHR might have better success at resolution. Still, if 
there were a better way to reduce the effects of power line noise or 
digital RF producing devices, that would certainly be of benefit to 
almost all of us.

Gary
KA1J
 
> > TOO MUCH, especially on weekends! Shouldn't there be a small
> segment of
> > the bands set aside for "non contest" use? Or would this be asking
> too
> > much??
> 
> It takes the level of activity of a contest to keep amateur
> allocations 
> free of over-the-horizon radar.
> 
> On 2013-03-17 - during the Russian DX Contest, one of few phone/CW
> events - I have only 65 entries in my OTHR SWL log.
<snip>