What is this? Oh some message about someone wanting to limit power in
contest to 100W. Probably from someone I never hear in the contests
complaining because they don't want to spend the money for an amplifier.
Where is the delete key. Ooops, I hit the space bar by mistake...
What is this? Must be a different message. Is that K5ZD making this
request? A well known, talented, successful contester? Hmmm. Maybe
he has had a stroke or something??
But wait a minute. I remember contesting back in the early 70's when I
was a little gun (SB-101 with a 2 el quad and wires). I remember even
before that running 75 watts in a CD party with a Hallicrafters S-120
"receiver" working VE8OO who called the same station I was calling, but
the station seemed to have had a power failure. I snuck in "OO de WB6ZVC"
and he worked me!! Then there was a hugh pileup after we finished.
Or, how about working Marty Laine in the first DX-pedition with my SB-101
on the forth call using a friends receiver on his XMIT freq and listening
over the phone.
It sure would be nice to operate a contest without having to worry about
blowing my neighbor's VCR out of the water. Now that I have learned to
use 2 radios in the SS, I can think of no better category to really show
of my new skills than the 100 watt category.
Maybe this makes more sense the more we think about it. Maybe we just need
some well known contesters to "Just say no" to the amplier and make the
competition at the lower power levels as intense, or maybe even more intense,
than the high power categories.
So where do we start? Randy, if you operate low power in the CW SS, so will
I. We should also challenge all of the top ten finishers on CW from last
year to do the same!!! I know that if enough of us switch off the amps,
the top ten low power can be just as ego boosting as making it on high
power.
I doubt we can change the rules to limit high power. This turns into a
global issue real fast. Many countries have lower power levels than we
have (ie: 150 or 400 watts), but ALL of them have contesters using KWs.
If I were God, I would make 100 watts the maximum power we could use on
HF. I will let the people trying to do moon bounce have more power (why
not 10 KW for them?).
Signed
Tree N6TR
another not unknown contester.
|