Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
In article .com, bb wrote:
Maybe they are on FM yet not trapped at all. Maybe if you let Dee and
Dan finish their thoughts on why they think the Techs are trapped we
would have something worth discussing.

My experience, which is now 8 years out of date, is that the techs did not
own the kind of station that you need to operate ssb or cw in a contest.
We would go to a friends house who had a wider range of bands (6m,2m,220,440
and 1.2gHz) than we had at home and work the contest from their using his
call sign.

It was quite fun, he had a barbecue in the summer and pizza in the fall.

One guy (a tech) would show up with a commander 2m amp at 1pm, spend
an hour getting ready and would not leave it except for "nature breaks"
and grabbing some food for the entire contest unless someone asked to
work 2m.

Geoff.

In the USA, the FM equipment has hit rock bottom in the last few years.
Almost any amateur of any income level can purchase new FM equipment.
Multi-mode rigs of course are much more expensive. Many, but not most
of the Techs that I knew had at least 2M ssb.