What FD Rule(s) would You Change?

[ND6M]

The HF bands were rancid? Could have fooled me -- the 20m PSK watering hole was more crowded than a $5 buffet on Sunday after church. We had a ball and at one point had a really good run going.

)
...and the LID (i won't post the call here ) on .070 sending CW for HOURS,...... yeah,.. i KNOW the FCC rules,.. but,.......

[KT0DX]

If I could get them to change one thing it would be the point value for the modes. I think SSB , CW and Digital should have the same point value. I have been on to many Field Days were they want to put CW operators on as much as possible to get more points. SSB operators are just fillers when the CW operators are tired. I know go learn the code and that is what I am doing now. RTTY is slow and not much participation (but it is growing). So you want a big score just bring CW operators to the Field Day site or change the point system.

73 de Steve, KT0DX
(Never tested by a VE )

[K0RGR]

Back in the days of PACKET RADIO, we could upload SM and NTS messages to the local BBS and off they would go. Nowadays, I haven't a CLUE how to send them a message, other than by EMAIL, which certainly wouldn't qualify!

Well, we may be getting back to that, and I was hoping to do it this weekend, but didn't get it set up in time. Using WINMOR, you could just dump them into NTSD- NTS Digital. My biggest problem was logistics. To handle these messages, I'd have to take one of the club's big stations off the air, and they were averaging 100 Q's an hour on 20. I could have done it with my GOTA station call, but I'd have to take GOTA off the air. The VHF station could have done it, but there's no digital gateway to NTSD on VHF around here. I talked about running my digital net on Saturday, but as I feared, it would have been a real zoo, and not worth the points. If they're going to do these message bonuses, they should allow you to do it from a separate transmitter that doesn't count for total transmitter class.

[K0RGR]

The HF bands were rancid? Could have fooled me -- the 20m PSK watering hole was more crowded than a $5 buffet on Sunday after church. We had a ball and at one point had a really good run going.

Up here, the only band that didn't suck was 20. We were doing the GOTA station, so we had to defer to the 'big guns' and stick to 40 meter SSB for most of the contest. I tried doing digital modes at GOTA and it was fairly successful, but we had problems coexisting with the neighboring SSB guys - (2 X 3580 = 7160). The signals on 40 were few, far between, weak and fading most of the day. We swapped antennas and radios just to make sure we were hearing reality. 40 CW and digital actually did fairly well, but our QRP guys were worse off there than we were.

This was about the worst I've heard it in many years. Sounded like a solar flare here.

[K6JJR]

It's just me, but I'd give them 200 watts. Some people do have 200 watt rigs, I have also known rigs that advertise 100 watts but run a stock 150 at the 100 watt setting. When it comes to the emergency excersise side, I'm more interested in the source of power (Generator, solar panel, wind turbine, car altenator, etc) than the amount.

I don't care about the big RVs with the air conditioners or the air conditioned tents, but for the love of the emergency prep angle, use the emergency power source to provide power to all of it.

All the newer rigs can be set at 100W. Older tube rigs may run 150W input, but only get 100W out. Not an issue to me.

[KF5FEI]

)
...and the LID (i won't post the call here ) on .070 sending CW for HOURS,...... yeah,.. i KNOW the FCC rules,.. but,.......

Or the guys who were trying to get a few PSK Q's around 14.095, right before the ARRL bulletins were due to be on...

I tried to get a bit of phone DX on Friday night to make sure everything was working, and there were a number of people who decided to tune up right next to where the DX stations had been working for quite a while. Still snagged Wales on 5 watts, so I was a happy camper.

We actually coexisted pretty well with our CW station on 20m -- he was running a vertical and we had an inverted V set up just 150 feet away or so. Just turn off the pre-amp and turn on the attenuator and it was all good. I was really surprised how many PSK-31 stations were on the air, especially at the beginning -- last year was pretty meager and I worked most everyone within a few hours. Didn't see anyone running faster modes, and the RTTY guys stuck to their watering hole pretty well too...

[N2EY]

I'd like to see the multiplier go to the average of the transmitters on the site (only the ones that count, your free GOTA station doesn't count in your exchange, it should not count in your power multiplier for example). Prime example here at my club's site we had:

1 100 Watt 40/15 meter CW station
1 100 Watt 75 meter phone station
1 100 watt 40 meter phone station
1 100 watt all band spare station
1 200 watt 20 meter phone / all band digital station
1 75 watt (if that) satellite ground station.

The average of these would be less than the 150 watt class and would still be fair. Obviously there would need to be a stipulation that the high power stations cannot exceed the class amount by a certian percentage that way you can't run 100A and have 99 QRP stations and a legal limit station and get a decent power multiplier.

So what multiplier did you guys claim?

The differences in power level listed are only a dB or so. Any modern "200 watt" rig can be run at 150 watts by simply lowering the drive a bit.

73 de Jim, N2EY

[N2EY]

If I could get them to change one thing it would be the point value for the modes. I think SSB , CW and Digital should have the same point value. I have been on to many Field Days were they want to put CW operators on as much as possible to get more points. SSB operators are just fillers when the CW operators are tired. I know go learn the code and that is what I am doing now. RTTY is slow and not much participation (but it is growing). So you want a big score just bring CW operators to the Field Day site or change the point system.

The reason for giving more points for CW and digital is simple: They take more operator skill and know-how. They deserve more points.

If there are 'phone ops waiting around to operate at your FD site, the transmitter category is too low.

73 de Jim, N2EY

[AB1OD]

Back in the days of PACKET RADIO, we could upload SM and NTS messages to the local BBS and off they would go. Nowadays, I haven't a CLUE how to send them a message, other than by EMAIL, which certainly wouldn't qualify!

In some places, those days still live. I sent a total of 12 NTS messages this weekend, all composed in Outpost, and all sent out via packet. Hardest part was finding folks willing to receive traffic or subject friends/family to receiving radiograms.

[KF5FEI]

Digital is pretty easy to do, way easier than CW -- I think the point value is based on having to deal with people running way overdriven signals wiping out the waterfall, people who want to tell you about every rat turd and dust particle in their shack, and those who keep clicking the wrong macro button.