K1ZM said: " ..... and it was enormously frustrating to call LOUD EU
stations all night long - who continued to CQ in our face - for hours
at a time!"
I see the same frustration from the other side of the pond when calling
NA stns. I hypothesise it is down to four reasons:
1) Poor rx antennas at called station site
2) High QRM level at called station site
3) Slow AGC on rx's
4) Poor operators at called site
With a moderate inv L, some radials and a big linear you can be a fairly
potent tx sig from a small lot - but a good beverage system takes acres!
Poor rx antennas prevent QRM nulling hence 2). The auto CQ'er set to
'dwell' barely long enough for a callsign to be received may not allow
the AGC to recover (particularly on SSB). NA stns are getting worse at
this - presumably in a desperate attempt to 'hold the channel'. Some of
the stns Jeff mentions were also guilty.
BUT ... have you noticed that a good operator is always a good operator
despite all this! Perhaps because he knows about the other three. I
also think each of our bands demands its own type of listening skill -
all 160m good ops know the difference in sound between a 'weak' stn and a
'DX' stn, right? They just sound different!
Good effort Jeff and really interesting report.
73 Chris G3SVL
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