Well, I was going to stay out of this thread but Gene's message "outed" me:
The Sprints are the best gauge of domestic contesting ability. The pool of
people who have come in first in the Sprints is a small group of really
talented
operators.
CQ WW has turned into the best gauge of building a strong station, and
copying the call signs that come back when you plop down on a frequency
and stay there for hours on end. To win takes a lot more than that - the
pool of people who have come in first in CQ WW is a small group of really
talented operators.
For CQ WW, all I need to do is copy the callsign (and I don't really need to
do that. Master.dta allows to me to clean up all kinds of questionable stuff)
and worry about the few odd Russian stations that might not be in the zone
CT wants them to be in.
In the Sprint, I have to copy every call correctly *and* a variable exchange.
One character off and I lose the QSO. If you get confused for 15 minutes
in the Sprint, your shot at the top ten is gone. It is the 100 meter sprint.
The exchange in CQ WW is meaningless, master.dta makes us basically
immune to the spotty log checking (compared to the Sprints) that is done.
The major skill is being fast while being deprived of sleep - it is the Ironman
triathalon.
Both are contests, both take different skills. We could argue forever who's
pee-pee is bigger, the Sprint winner or the CQ WW winner, but that is
yesterday's news. The real question is: to remain a viable activity, should
contesting offer more outlets for those who can't, won't, or don't wanna
invest the time, energy, and money required to to be competitive in 48 hour
DX endurathons?
Like it or not, contesting in 20 years will look more like the Sprints than
it
will like the CQ WW. I'm sure many here remember when the ARRL
contests stretched over multiple weekends.
Remember: just a short time ago (looking at it on a global scale) the
dinosaurs said: "Big deal, the mud is drying up. No way
those monkeys running around in the trees will replace us."
On another note: I *don't* think Sprint scores should count towards WRTC type
stuff, unless we also count other countries's domestic shorty contests
towards making the grade.
John Pescatore
John Pescatore WB2EKK
IDC Government
Falls Church, VA
pescatore@idcg.com
>From gjk@hogpa.ho.att.com (Gerald J Kersus) Wed Feb 22 20:34:36 1995
From: gjk@hogpa.ho.att.com (Gerald J Kersus) (Gerald J Kersus)
Subject: Infrequent signing and dupes
Message-ID: <9502222034.AA15020@hogpc.ho.att.com>
There was at least one practice worse that not signing your call:
NOT SENDING YOUR POWER! I worked V44KAO on several bands and he was not
sending power on every QSO. He did respond to requests. Maybe I'm wrong,
but based on the activity, V44KAO was not just some casual station handing
out a few contacts/multipliers.
Gerry, W1GD
>From Joel B Levin <levin@BBN.COM> Wed Feb 22 20:00:50 1995
From: Joel B Levin <levin@BBN.COM> (Joel B Levin)
Subject: Infrequent signing and dupes
Message-ID: <3629.793483250@bbn.com>
|For the folks with very long calls, sign ever 2 or 3 QSO's is reasonable.
|The real offenders are the ones who very rarely sign.
|
|Siging every time doesn't seem to slow down EA8EA. (I know, it's a short call.)
I hate to keep bringing up the subject of newbies (like me), even
though I don't do it very often. Some of these calls are pretty
obscure at 30+ wpm; the more often I hear it the faster I can decode
it and decide what to do. I'm slow enough at hunt-and-peck as it is;
but since I won't even try a pile-up till I'm sure I know the call
sign, waiting 5 or 10 qsos each time is a drag (I'm getting better at
it though). This especially applies to call signs like 6v6u - I'm not
using packet so I have to bust these entirely on my own :-)
Regards / JBL KD1ON
|