About as much fun as a tonsillectomy

I tried my hand at the Adventure Radio Society Spartan Sprint tonight. I did not have much fun.

40 Meters was once again useless, with 20 over 9 QRN. Unfortunately, 80 Meters wasn't much better. The QRN was slightly less and I managed 8 contacts. The band seemed to be in ripe, summer time conditions with lots of loud static crashes.

A good time was not had by all.

Where's the FCC? Why aren't they doing anything about all these consumer electronic home entertainment devices that are causing RFI? It seems you can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting yet another kind of poorly designed and constructed device that's polluting the RF environment with its spew.

Gosh, I remember the days when people used to complain how Hams were messing around with TV reception, causing weird herringbone patterns and the like. Now it's just the opposite! Plasma TVs, broadband cable modems, baby monitors and the like will be the death of Ham Radio when the aether gets so polluted with spurious RF signals that we won't be able to hear anything anymore!

VERY frustrating.

73 de Larry W2LJ