Here on the West coast propagation was poor and there were only a
few stations. As such, the call CQ and chat method worked fine. With
more stations though it would soon descend into chaos and likely
prevent contacts instead of encouraging them. As more folks here on
the West coast we may have to go to a net control type of thing. And
there are more stations coming up, since I got mine I have talked 4
others into getting one and I assume they in turn are talking it up
to others.
If there is a net control, IMHO having them QRO seems like a good
idea, it will help them be the link that pulls it together. In the
summer later might be better, the skip was short on the West coast
but lengthened as it often does as the sun goes down. By 9:30PM I
was picking up stations from IL load and clear and made a few
contacts to the East.
Jonathan - KK6RPX
On 6/5/2017 2:00 PM, KC8WBK via
Groups.Io wrote:
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Our group of BITX40
operators have been doing a QSO night for Bitx40 operators and
anyone else interested for several weeks.? We have organized this
as an undirected event at a certain time and frequency where the
participants are encouraged to call CQ. Last night it was 7pm
local at 7277 kHz.? The intent is that it can be a world wide
event, and that an operator can participate at his local time, or
at the local time of adjacent time zones.
The goals of this net are to operate QRP to QRP, to encourage new
users to call CQ and learn to operate, to learn what the BITX40
transceiver is capable of, to enable discussion of technical
aspects of QRP radio (antennas, tuners, radio kit building,
propagation, etc.), and to build camaraderie and friendship.
Last night was very successful, with 18 QSOs from across the
Eastern USA and Canada, ranging from New Brunswick to Georgia to
Iowa.? We were lucky in that one of the operators took the role of
net control, because it would have been somewhat chaotic if there
was no one directing the net.
Considering the fact that we are low power, and we are often
working faint signals, how would you recommend to operate a QRP
net??
We could continue to encourage operators to gather at a certain
time and frequency and call CQ.? However, this tends to get
difficult with more than 5 or so operators.
We could have a QRP operator with a good station act as net
control, so rather than all participants being encouraged to call
CQ, the participants would answer a QRZ from net control.
We could have multiple net control operators, perhaps on nearby
frequencies for different regions.
We could have one operator using more power to coordinate the net
as net control. This kind of takes the fun away but would work
better.
We could start out calling CQ on a certain frequency and then have
contact stations move to adjacent frequencies to work out QSOs and
ragchew.
We could use spotting websites to shift frequencies when QSB
happens.
Do you have any suggestions on how to improve our QSO night
procedures?? How should we improve our procedures?
