Are Radiosport Contests REALLY Emergency Preparedness exercises?

This little Op-Ed piece is short, and, sweet.

Virtually every Friday/Saturday evening (local time) during a radiosport event, there is always at least ONE IDIOT who is bored out of his mind (YL OP's thankfully are never bored),  Finding nothing else better to do they intentionally QRM my radiosport activities, justifying it by complaining that we take
up too much bandwidth and therefore they can't pursue on-the-air activities that they like; altho what those activities are, are completely unknown to us as well as to them.

One November evening during the JIDX Ssb contest, when N6KI handed over frequency control he warned me that there was an "F - U!" recording heckler S-8+ on the frequency.  Sure enough, the minute I started up he was back at it.  I immediately recognized that recording as one I have heard nightly on the Waste Coast's 3.840 "Garbage Dump" frequency.  While he may well be an IDIOT, unfortunately he DOES have an amplifier - SO2V to the rescue.



Make that a modified SO2V.  Synchronizing the FT-1000mp's VFO's, I found a 2nd clear frequency and overwrote VFO-B.  When the monkey man would make the scene I would SWAP VFO's and continue on the alternate frequency.  Luckily the frequency difference was only 7.17khz apart; eventually, the spotting networks had both run frequencies so internet snoops could find NX6T
more quickly.  After 2-1/2 hours of intermittent playback, he put on his jammies and slinked off
to bed - he was probably EXHAUSTED!

While that IDIOT was a complete disruption to "normal" "peaceful" operating, in fact, this was just another emergency preparedness drill; can I copy vital information amidst horrible QRM and enter
it into the log.

Specific contests have numerous preparedness benefits; for example:

• The North American QSO party (NAQP) and state QSO parties have a simple
  enough exchange that radiosport-newbies can figure it out rather quickly and
  become quite proficient before the event is over.  QSO parties also orient us
  to state/county/province abbreviations; often needed in an emergency. 
• DX contests orient us to world geography, offering up the opportunity to
  study propagation and the effects of space WX.
• RTTY / FT8 contest activities orient us to alternate modes of communication,
  beyond Ssb and Cw.
• Operating from remote/portable locations as I often do is yet another way to be
  emergency prepared.  I've operated from hotel rooms, mountain tops, residential
  stealth setups, card tables in garages and even roadside portable.
• For Field Day this year I joined up with K6QLF operating from a 42' sailboat, running
  a sloping 55' end-fed (Marconi) wire up the mast.  While not much Dx (outside of KH6)
  was had, for North American Field Day, a nearly 272-degree azimuth was made
  possible - exactly what we were looking for.

Outside of Field Day, the original emergency preparedness exercise was none other than the November Sweepstakes contest, with it's simulation of radiogram sending.  No other radiosport contest comes close to this format; except maybe the WAE (Worked All Europe) event with its sending of QTC packets.

Bottom-Line? 
Anyone who believes that properly conducted radiosport activities are NoT to some degree
all about emergency-preparedness needs to get a life and go to bed. 

1 8 . 1  2 8 . 2 8  S S B

If you are looking for quiet non-contest bands, that is what 30 & 17 meters are all about,  I frequently tune 30 meters looking for DX-goodies amidst the peace and quiet.  When operating as WP2/WQ6X from St. Croix (Jan 2014), I spent considerable time on 30 & 17 Cw as well as one afternoon on 17-m Ssb ([CLICK HERE] for the video).  Technically our REAL reason for being on St. Croix was the 1st-Place win (for DX) in the ARRL RTTY RU contest.  ([CLICK HERE] to read about all that.)

WP2/WQ6X running 17-m Ssb (from the video)

Amateur Radio has always been and always will be about Emergency Preparedness. 
Even the 2,004 non-contest QSOs made as WQ6X/WP2 constituted Emergency Preparedness.

So what about you?
What do YOU do for Emergency Preparedness?