>>> The 500 khz band if it becomes available to
radio amateurs has traditionally
been a CW band. >>>
And RTTY. And other digital modes.
Only rtty and variations on 516 khz in recent years. This ex marine band
was 99.9% CW until it was phased out in favour of INMARSAT.
Of course, it's also MF rather than LF, where a
transmitting antenna of a given size is eight times more efficient than
at 2200m, and where there's only about a third the QRN.
This is not true. If there is an electrical storm
generating QRN then all bands suffer equally from LF through to
HF.
I have checked this over the years and 160 metres suffers very severely
during an electrical storm.
There is very little difference on 137, 500 and 1800 khz when it comes
to QRN. I have checked it so many times.
Yes, I suppose under those conditions, "normal CW"
might be adequate.
CW is the only mode. PSK is useless on LF/MF/HF under noisy condx
and especially in QRN. The phase gets totally distorted and the
information at the RX end lost. PSK has been tried in the past by some
commercial operators and it never was a success except at VHF/UHF and beyond.
For amateur radio purposes a couple of good CW operators is all that is
required to exchange the necessary information between stations in an
economical bandwidth. Use data modes if you have a large volume of traffic to
shift.
de G3KEV
