To the Nets: Just because you have been on the same frequency for 75 years, that doesn't mean you own it. All frequencies are shared. If you vary your frequency, or even if you don't have a net one night, the radio world isn't going to end.
To repeater owners: Just because you are coordinated doesn't mean you own the frequency. Coordination is a recommendation, not a frequency assignment. It's your call sign on the repeater and it's your station and your responsibility ...just as if you had left the door open to your station at home. If there is abuse, lock the door. Don't ask us to be baby-sitters or hall monitors of your repeater. That's what control operators are for. Nobody asked you to start a repeater. If you shut it down tomorrow, what would happen? People would use OTHER repeaters!
To the contesters: be more courteous. You are responsible for the frequency you are operating on and realize that's true even when you operate split. All frequencies are shared.
To those who don't like contesters: lighten UP!! Contests are short lived. Use the WARC bands. Wash the car. Cut the grass. Learn from the contesters - and this applies to you Traffic net folks too - learn from the contesters. They pass information a lot faster and more efficiently than you do. Contesters are some of the best radio operators on planet Earth. If the contesters operated at the same pace as some of the emergency traffic nets, the contest would be over after the first few dozen signal strengths were exchanged!
To the widebanders: If you want to be a Broadcaster, apply for a broadcast license. Using extraordinarily wide bandwidth on crowded frequencies at peak operating time is rude, selfish and inconsiderate.
To the QRP'ers: Thank you, thank you, thank you for your vitality, inspiration, enthusiasm and for being BUILDERS again! I wish I could take your enthusiasm and spread it over all segments of Amateur radio. When I watch you folks, I see the excitement and magic of my first contact.
To those who don't like QRP'ers: Lighten UP. ANYONE can use a linear amplifier as a crutch.
To the rag chew nets: 4 or 5 people meeting on the same frequency every night for 50 years using 1200 watts to talk a few hundred miles when 100 watts would do just fine is not a net. It's an informal roundtable. It ain't going to hurt you either to vary your frequency or skip a night. And the so-called "net" on 75 that bills itself as an "Oasis of Amateur Radio": Give us all a break. You are an ordinary roundtable. And no net is an "Oasis of Amateur radio."
To those of you who don't like DXpeditions: Lighten UP! If a group of people want to spend a lot of money to go to a rock or sandbar in the ocean, live in a tent and swat flies and scorpions for a week and talk over Ham radio 24 hours a day, SO WHAT: LET'EM DO IT!!. DXpeditions, too, are short lived, and such operation must be important to SOMEONE. Scarborough Reef drew over 50,000 contacts didn't it. And weren't over half of them CW, by the way? Nobody would have even known about it had it not been published in popular radio magazines.
When I'm elected President my first act will be to appoint Hollingsworth as FCC Chairman.
(From 1978 WRTH)
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