Contests, Haters and QRM

The greatest thing about this wonderful hobby of ours, is the diversity of it.  If you are into emergency communications, good.  If you are into chewing the rag with friends near or far, good.  If you are into tinkering with electronics, radio direction finding, satellites, etc. that's great also.  Alternatively, if you are not into some aspect of ham radio, that is also great.  There is so much to the hobby, that you are bound to find some aspect of it that suits your fancy.

For me, I like emergency communications.  I like making contacts with QRP stations and I like tinkering with electronics.  These are fun for me and they are the aspects I missed most when I was off-air.  The most fun I have, however, is contesting.  Sure, there are some that don't like it because of any number of reasons (including the oft cited claim that contesting isn't staying true to the hobby) but they are allowed to not like it and are free to express their dislike of it, but there is a time and a place for it.

I have spent many, many hours listening to these hams complaining up on 40m, 75m and 160m.  These stations are usually the ones that meet on the air each evening, rag chewing for several hours at 800W power or more and get bent out of shape if anyone outside of their clique dare to try to join their discussion.  New hams learn the hard way that even though the laws say that no one OWNS a particular frequency, there are certain places one dare not tread unless you have the output power and can stomach being told you are a sub-par ham because you became licensed under the no-code rules or you cannot copy code at 30wpm.  As far as I am concerned, these hams, unfortunately, have placed themselves in the same category as a certain crazy Canadian (and his US ilk) that hangs out around 14.313MHz, especially after this weekend's NAQP.  Let me explain how I have come to this conclusion.

There were a few contest stations that were staying put on one frequency on 40m for several hours.  When it came time for these contest-haters to have their daily sked and they found that someone was parked on their usual frequency, instead of scanning around for an open frequency (or canceling their rag chew session for one evening) they deliberately tuned up on to of the original station, started talking over the original station (saying, "The Frequency IS in use" as if they were there first) and just other deliberate forms of harassment.  Then, not only were they doing this on their normal meetup frequency, they started traveling the band QRMing everyone, everywhere on 40m.  One even brazenly set down a dead key and turned the VFO slowly so as to maximize his performance and damage.

It isn't like these contests pop up at the last minute.  The information about the dates, times and bands are well published ahead of time in places like QST or at the WA7BNM/honicopia website, so there is plenty of time to steer clear of the contests or make other plans.  There are certain contests I don't really get into and that is what I do - I get away from the bands or away from the rig altogether for the duration of the contest.

I am sure that these same OMs will be at it again during Field Day and every other big contest in the future - unless they come to their senses and figure out that the contests aren't going away anytime soon.

73's and hope to catch you on the bands.