I was helping with some contests ...but some were wide band...

[KQ0C]

What may seem to you to be an out of band signal may not actually be. For instance Canadian stations have much different operating privleges than US stations, They can operate SSB on frequencies we can only use for CW.

[W3HKK]

sure are lots of  pros and cons either way.

One of my "favorites" is the guy who qrz's the frequency for 1 second and then jumps in with both feet. before somebody can   come back...or even focus on that one signal out of many in the "neighborhood."   

Not worth arguing about, tho.  Just dig in your heels and keep  going. Eventually one of you will decide its  easier grazing someplace else.

Then   comes the guy who thinks every station on an adjacent frequency is out to get HIM, forgetting about how conditions change, and rotators turn ( about the same thing.)

Kudos to the  RAC boys though.  They seem to keep things in perspective with (mostly)  good humor.

[KD6KWZ]

What may seem to you to be an out of band signal may not actually be. For instance Canadian stations have much different operating privileges than US stations, They can operate SSB on frequencies we can only use for CW.

Not just Canada. Compare the US/Canada DX-SR8T versus the European & elsewhere DX-SR8E here:

http://www.alinco.com/usa.html

I don't think the wider bands are for MARS work.  

I'm curious which countries get wider bands.

[N6AJR]

Don't put too much on the contesters "bad" station as the only cause..

 I am a modest contester, and belong to a major contest club.  When I first started contesting I had no idea how folks could possibly pull anything out of that mess.  I was using an IC 746 pro with stock filters and a vertical.

 Now I have a nice  3 element beam, and an Orion with the latest software, and lots of decent filters and I too can pull out signals only 2 kc apart on ssb and 400 cycles apart on cw. I can put the noise off to the side of the beam, and get a stronger signal and some of those problems go away. 

 I have 7 or 8 radios and I can not get that kind of performance from my 746 pro, or my ft 857d,  and even the ts 2000 is a bit weak there. ( I use it for UHF/vhf tests.)  The Pegasus does pretty good but the Orion is my contest rig.  I also have 6 or 8 amps but the one I use is the  Alpha 87a with the Orion.  This is a nice clean combination and hears and talks much better than my original 746 / ic 2-KL and AT 500.

So perhaps some of the "wide signals and overdriven amps" are a product of a poor front end on the receiver more so than on the transmitter.  I'm just saying....

besides this is the Contesting forum, not the "pick on the contesters" forum