"Caveat Lector" wrote in message
news:aLk0e.112$k57.19@fed1read07...
"Hank Oredson" wrote in message
ink.net...
"Doug Smith W9WI" wrote in message
...
Caveat Lector wrote:
There is this to understand
All of the below is old hat and has been going on for a long time -- 30
years that I know of.
No worse now as compared to then.
I would disagree with that assessment.
There are a lot of things in ham radio that aren't worse than they were
30 years ago. But this isn't one of them.
I got my license in 1973 and I clearly remember a day when if you would
listen, you could almost always find the guy the DX was working. Yeah,
there were plenty of people who didn't know that - who would just pick a
transmit frequency at random & just call there - but they didn't call
continuously *every time* the DX stopped transmitting.
And WHILE the DX is transmitting ...
Indeed, while I hate to join the "I hate packet" bandwagon there really
does seem to be a correlation between continuous calling and the
explosive growth of spotting nets.
Used to use things like the telephone and of course 10M AM.
The local group tended to monitor 28.7.
--
... Hank
http://home.earthlink.net/~horedson
http://home.earthlink.net/~w0rli
And in the past, many DX clubs set up DX spotting repeaters on 2M -- some
with 200 members
Yes, that was much later, once there were repeaters :-)
There were also various DX nets on HF.
For VHF DXing there were the 75M and 10M coordination freqs.
Also 2M simplex
And prior to that folks gave a one ringer landline call to their DX
buddies as u sed.
An before the clusters, avid DXers subscribed to DX newsletters to "spot"
the DX
Used to get several of them ...
Ala The West Coast DX Bulletin by Hugh Cassidy WA6AUD
Or now a days The Daily DX.
Any difference between these and today's Packet Cluster other than wide
distribution ?????
DX cluster is just another tool.
There is also much better propagation information available now.
Used to use the charts in QST, but they were just estimates and
were, on average, two weeks out of date. Now there is good
realtime data available. The good news is that some folks will
look at that data and decide some particular band is dead. That
gives an edge to those of us who tune it anyway ... and find that
unexpected 5 minute opening to very rare Eastern Lower Slabovia.
I find, however, that my best luck is with some rare station that has just
come on air. I'll post it to the cluster right after I've worked it :-)
But heck, I'm not a serious DXer ...
--
... Hank
http://home.earthlink.net/~horedson
http://home.earthlink.net/~w0rli