[NLRS] jt44

[Andrew T. Flowers, K0SM]

Ray, and of course, anyone else who is interested,

At the risk of opening up a relatively fresh wound, I'll try to keep 
this short.  I talked with Joe Taylor, K1JT over the phone last August. 
 While many of us were enjoying the CSVHF conference, Joe was on the 
phone with "the person in charge" of the EME contest at ARRL HQ.  (I 
don't remember exactly who it was, but it doesn't really matter.) 
 Apparently, this guy was *not* willing to allow anything but CW and 
SSB.  I'm not sure if this "official position" has changed, but I'm 
guessing it hasn't since I haven't heard anything since.  

Now that *that* is out of the way.....

Keep in mind that the spirit of this contest has always been to 
encourage EME activity.  Period. It seems to me that the SSB allowance 
is there to say, "you can do it...if you *really* want to."  I interpret 
that to mean that the communication medium hasn't really mattered, so 
long as it is making a 500,000-mi round trip. (I might also point out 
that the VHF contests allow you to use RTTY, FSTV, or whatever so long 
as you exchange a grid square.)  You will look back through the 
soapboxes over the last few years and notice many, many excited 
operators who used the contest period to make their first EME contacts 
with their tiny stations.  Over the last few months many folks have used 
JT44 as their "gateway" to EME, and it is really beyond me why we would 
insist on a contest rule to eliminate such an avenue. As far as I'm 
concerned, if you want to make some JT44 skeds for the contest, please 
do so and put them in your log.  Some comments in the soapbox would be 
nice too.  Let the contest department deal with the flames if they don't 
think it counts.

That's my take on it.  If you want to blast anything I've said, please 
send it too me directly so we don't bloody up the reflector :)  Thanks 
for the bandwidth.

Andy K0SM/2

Ray Johnson wrote:

>Does anyone know if the arrl has changed the rules to allow jt44 in the EME contest? In the online rules is states "Contacts may be on CW or SSB"    WHY???  Well.....you are transmitting a ssb signal...... Gray area??
>
>thanks 73
>W9RAY
>
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