Hi Colin
We don’t know each other but I’m
very sad to hear that you feel the need to go QRT especially due to anonymous
twonks. I’d ignore them and don’t give them the satisfaction
of influencing YOUR activities.
As regards difficulty, my garden is
smallish and I have a notoriously compromise antenna system slung up in a
silver birch tree much to the horror of G3XIZ and M0BMU who have both wisely
counselled me on the idea of moving it to a tree free support. I use an
old Icom 735 HF TX as my transmitter and it puts out a good 25 watts on 500 and
470, though the PBF needs bypassing and a homebrew 7 pole one inserting
otherwise it will end up like my first IC735 as a RX only!! (The smoked
filter board and PA are still on my repair shelf!)
I started out on 500 in 2009 with a NOV
and love tinkering on MF. It’s taught me to send CW on an old hand
key and my receiving is getting better tho still very QRSS!!
Nonsense emails from anonymous bullies is
no reason to give up and the technical issues and their resolution is all part
of the fun down here. Besides, in the spring G3XIZ and I are going to
finally fire up my old Decca (ex G3AQC) and you don’t want to miss that
for the world!
So, please reconsider and join G3XIZ,
M0JXM, M0FMT, G3DXZ and even the venerable Mal on the Sunday morning CW chat
net (I cheat with my laptop and DM780 programme! Lol).
There’s hours of fun to be had on
WSPR (when you can get it working that is, I upgraded my laptop to W7 (yes daft
I know) and since then its been a chaos of ports and disconnects but I will
overcome and get it stable (wine helps!)
G3XIZ and I natter on RTTY across the
mighty dx of some 3 miles and again much enjoyment is to be had.
Stay with us Colin and enjoy the
bands. Besides with a callsign like yours M5FRA its made for MF, “Makes
5(00) Fun Radio Activity”! (ok so I wont win prizes at “Backronym
of the year”! ) J
Best 73s
Jim G7NKS
Dr. Jim Cowburn
IO92ub
thank you for your
support. I must admit to being very disillusioned with the response I have
received and do not like the abusive direct emails from anonymous senders. I
decided today to give up ion MF as it should be fun rather than conflict. I
know I should have known better and could have phrased my emails better but I
always had a smile on my face which is hard to convey electronically.
MF is difficult
here as my antenna is in the neighbours garden, they happen to be the in laws!
They have also reported Morse code coming over their wireless! They are very
good about it all but I do not want to push it too much. I have an antenna down
lead switch box (vacuum relay) and an coax switch that needs to be installed
yet that means a small shed/box in their flower bed. So, all in all may ditch
the experiment and return to HF QRP.
------ Original Message ------
From: "Roger Lapthorn" <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]"
<[email protected]>
Sent: 04/01/2013 11:32:53
Subject: Re: Re[3]: LF: 477 A local SSB chat band ?
A well reasoned
email Colin. Although SSB is technically feasible it should not be
encouraged.
BTW, I tend to
agree that WSPR is oddly positioned in the new band and personally am in favour
of a "light touch" bandplan if only to encourage folks to congregate
in the right watering holes.
Very encouraged by
results so far with my minimal system. Had a nice CW QSO with G3XIZ last night
on CW who answered my CQ call.
I am sorry but I did not express myself very clearly in
the last couple of posts and there were lots of typos. I will attempt to
explain why I am opposed to digital voice/SSB on 630m.
The main reason is that although it is technically
possible it is impractical as it will take up a disproportionate amount of
bandwidth which will effectively deny other people the space to operate.
The idea that it could be daylight hours only, VOX only
etc etc as a gentlemen’s agreement is wildly optimistic in light of
the abuse of the other gentlemen’s agreements called bandplans.
I also feel strongly that we are on the bands as a
privilege and not a right. I know for sure that there is a lot of abuse of
license conditions and have heard ops openly admit to running 1kw+ in order to
work DX or to ‘level the playing field’ in contests. That sort of
abuse will only do us harm and although some argue that Ofcom are not
interested in such things let me assure you that they are.
The new 630m band is allocated on a secondary basis to
aeronautical mobile users. There are still NDBs within the band and some
countries impose restriction or deny access to 630m altogether because of the
shared use. It will only take somebody to either accidentally or deliberately
QRM to an aeronautical user for us to lose the band or face more restrictions.
I can see the headlines now!
Finally, and I will not post here again on this subject, I
am not anti SSB, anti contests, anti much else, but do believe we need a
responsible attitude to how we use the bands. We should not be constantly
pushing for change to suit our own interests or deliberately flouting the law,
in the long term that will only lead to loss of privilege not more access.
And to answer an aggressive direct email which
suggested I **** off and play somewhere else, yes I do operate digital modes
and have done for 40+ years starting with a Creed 7B. I also use SSB, CW, QRP
and QRO and even microwaves.
