IARU vs. fishnets

This past weekend I took part (half-heartedly) in the IARU contest. I only worked the lower end of 10 metre band looking for new DXCC entities on CW.

Unfortunately the QRM from the driftnets was a huge problem; it pretty much wiped out the first 50 kHz with beacons every 5 kHz. I would have thought the beacons were low power devices, but many were S9 plus, whereas most of the signals from the contesters in Europe and Middle East were fairly weak. I guess I had very good propagation to one or other productive fishing area. Possibly the Indian Ocean ??

I wrote about this on a previous blog posting:

http://zs6a.blogspot.com/2011/10/haunting-foghorns-on-10m.html

I find it odd that the radio amateur fraternity has allowed this situation to develop.

IMHO This illegal use of the spectrum must be investigated and the perpetrators should be held accountable.

Refer to the URL below, scroll down to "28 MHz Drift Net Beacons"

http://www.qsl.net/n2sln/driftnetbeacons.html