On Tue,3/17/2015 9:44 AM, mstangelo@comcast.net wrote:
Classical 160 meter operating involves real estate and the expenditure of lots
of money or time for effective transmitting and receiving antenna systems and
amplifiers. This is accomplished mostly by old men with lots of spending money
and time on their hands, kind of like the Olympic games.
Exactly right.
How can younger people or those without the resources participate in these
endeavors? They came up with the X-games instead of the Olympics. Hams are
starting to use the newer technology to enhance their radio experience.
I am one of those old men how is presently busy with work but retirement is on
the horizon. I have an acre property now but my wife and I will probably
downsize once our mixing product leaves the nest. If you asked me a decade ago
I would preach the classical operator model but now I will take advantage of
the new technology to allow me to operate in the future.
Both methods have to co-exist or else the hobby will die. They should have
additional categories for remote receiving or operating in contests and awards
chasing.
Exactly right again. As an OT, ham since age 14 (1955), I'm about ten
years ahead of you in the retirement game, with 8 acres of woods. I'm
limited in what I can work by the RX noise of distant stations, and even
here, with my nearest neighbors 500 ft from my antennas, I'm
increasingly limited by their noise. I've got grow lights to the NE
(EU) and a big solar installation at the border of my property (SE).
Any model for the future that does not allow "Joe Ham" to somehow escape
his increasingly noisy RF environment WILL lead to death of the hobby.
The key is to make the rule(s) reasonable for reasonable people. The
Stew Perry rule seems to be in the ballpark for individual contesters. I
fully appreciate the technical challenges for multi-ops, and agree that
for contest stations, TX and RX ought to be limited to a single site.
And I strongly support remotely operated multi-ops, such as the recent
operation that began this discussion a month or so ago, and that they
ought to be treated as any other multi-op.
73, Jim K9YC
_________________
Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
|