Hi Jay,
i hear you. I live on the edge of the abyss. If I turn my beam NE I
see what you are talking about. There is almost zero activity in that
direction. The only way I can tap into the real activity is to make
ridiculously large antennas to overcome some of my geographic
disadvantage and point towards New York City almost 300 miles away. I
am thankful for being near enough to sample some VHF activity. The bad
news is that the activity that we enjoyed has dropped drastically. My
suggestion was an attempt to build activity on a Sprint night and
encourage people with small stations to try some difficult paths rather
than quit and go elsewhere.
One of the selling points of internet coordination involves improving
activity in the areas beyond the Golden Corridor. If I lived in
Missouri or Nebraska, I would welcome a Sprint night for bringing out
some players, and I would run skeds with any and all takers in hopes of
making a few contacts. I would fill up my four hours if there were
stations to run with. Back a few years ago, it was possible here to
make QSOs on 222 MHz at certain times or days of the week. Now, there is
no opportunity for such contacts. I have to rely on contests or sprints
or set up schedules in advance. I wish things would change for the
better, but I am not optimistic.
One of these days I'll get my 222 antenna tilted up and we can try a sked.
Dave K1WHS
On 10/2/2020 10:46 AM, Jay RM wrote:
Dave, you need to look at the BIG picture here. Be happy you live in or
near the "Sprint corridor" and actually have access to enough activity to
make it through the first hour.
Lamenting about not running the entire 4 hours rings kinda hollow on those
that don't have enough activity on ANY VHF band - including 2M - to make it
through the first 10 minutes.
I'm not complaining - it is what it is.
-W9RM
Keith J Morehouse
Managing Partner
Calmesa Partners G.P.
Olathe, CO
On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 7:24 AM Chet S <chetsubaccount@snet.net> wrote:
Hi Dave,
Many contests suffer the tapering off of activity after a while. Monday
night football, super-bowls, debates, Sunday afternoon sweepstakes
doldrums, family time, etc.
And nowadays we are constantly pressed to add something "new and better"
into our lives, and if we take more on, then there is less relax time for
our other stuff.
Maybe I'm old school but still highly enjoy hearing a weak signal, turning
the beam to peak it, and trying to work it. Ahhh, that xyz station
improvement I made this summer is working...or not...or pick a beam
direction and go fishing to see what you can catch. Make your own decisions
when and whether to call toward a population density direction or toward
missing grids. SSB vs. FT8. To me that is the name of the game. I do not
like the idea of pre-arranged contacts or arranging them in real time, that
seems more like DXing than Contesting and not very satisfying.
The sprints are a good fun break from the workday, but are 4 hours a bit
much? It's supposed to be a sprint not a marathon, so maybe with shorter
hours the station activity would be more consistent throughout.
73,
Chet, N8RA
-----Original Message-----
From: VHFcontesting <vhfcontesting-bounces+chetsubaccount=
snet.net@contesting.com> On Behalf Of David Olean
Sent: Thursday, October 1, 2020 5:01 PM
To: (Radio) VHF Contesting <VHFcontesting@contesting.com>; 222 MHz
ACTIVITY <222Activity@Groups.io>
Subject: [VHFcontesting] An idea for the sprints.
It isn't much of an idea, more a suggestion, to not abandon the VHF
sprints when activity dies down after the initial spurt of activity. I was
not a big fan of opening up chat pages for coordination of contacts in VHF
contests. My reasoning was that it favored stations that had good internet
connectivity and penalized those that did not.
That being said, we now have the ability to set up schedules for almost
impossible contacts simply by coordinating on internet sites dedicated to
such things. So why did everyone bail out after an hour or so on the
222 Sprint? The few diehards left were ones that I had already
contacted. It would have been great to try some long haul tropo contacts
on CW or even FT4/FT8 with stations that are normally not in range. Trying
and failing at a 400+ mile QSO with a 25 watt station or trying a meteor
scatter contact is much more agreeable than spending an hour calling CQ and
tuning around on a almost empty band with no takers and no results. A few
posts for skeds by several of the diehards also went unheeded towards the
latter half of the sprint. The last hour, when things die down is the time
to experiment and see what your station can do even if it is outside of
your comfort zone. The worst that can happen is that the path does not
work! Then, there is the problem of which chat page to monitor. Having
poor connectivity makes monitoring a number of them impossible for many
operators. On a good day, I might be able to cover two chat pages. We
should set up a standardization for the sprints so
people are all looking at the same place.
So next time, think twice about quitting early! Do something exciting
instead.
73
Dave K1WHS
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