Seriously though Mal.
You seem to be lucky enough to be able to devote hours of your day
to policing the lower bands, and actually operating, which must be
great. Most of us have other things
to do and some can contribute more by the use of innovative software and
systems that allow automatic reporting of signals at levels comparable to or
better than any human operator, without having to stay glued to the
receiver.
I fully expect to be able to
gather enough data from WSPR transmissions eventually to measure
the movement and size of propagation 'zones' and probably
other useful data too. I don?t expect you to understand the technicalities, I
have only a limited ability in this area, I find the maths hard, but then
I am not a Nobel prize winner. There are those in our community who
really do understand what the potential is and are working hard to
realise it.
The use of these modes and the
potential benefits may be outside your interests, but have the courtesy to
respect that others actively wish to use the band for genuine experimental
reasons, rather that just operating. Some may not even want to have
QSOs
FWIW, I am also a keen and
fairly competent cw operator, perhaps without prejudices instilled by my
profession, and I am able to operate and receive weak CW within tens of Hz of
other transmissions. If you are half the operator you claim to be, you too
will not be severely impacted by the usage of a small segment of the band by
WSPR or other machine generated transmissions.
A good proportion of my
operation from 500KHz to 24GHz and even light, is on CW, and it has
netted me more DX and first countries from GM that I can remember. However you
will find me on JT65 and JT6M regularly on 4m and 6m as it is better for some
of the propagation modes I am interested in.
I will be running up a WSPR
transmitting station on 500KHz soon with luck, and will endeavour to
provide the grabber and WSPR receive system, 24/7
www.dc2light.co.uk
There is room, even in the
500KHz band, for multiple modes and interests to be explored without
significant conflict. Be happy that the band is being actively
used.
You are not going to have regular
QSOs with stations like me who want to experiment, as I am not often in a
position to break out the key. When I do have time to operate, it is likely to
be on CW, the WSPR system will be off and I hope to see you
there!
Happy New Year
Mark GM4ISM
