I have noticed lately that the green sub-display on my TS940 comes up
showing "Trio Kenwood" instead of the frequency display I had left it set
on. Hitting the Scroll button restores the frequencies. I don't recall "Trio
Kenwood" being displayed in the past, so I'm wondering if this is a signal
that a memory backup battery is going or something? Any thoughts
appreciated.....73/Jon AA1K
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>From wallace offutt <woffutt@davinci.netaxis.com> Sat Mar 15 15:19:03 1997
From: wallace offutt <woffutt@davinci.netaxis.com> (wallace offutt)
Subject: [CQ-Contest] This Contest Moves!
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970310175217.14418A-100000@davinci.netaxis.com>
THIS CONTEST MOVES!
By Hal Offutt, W1NN (ex-K8HVT)
This is an article about the mobile competition in the 1996 MARAC County
Hunters Contest CW, an annual event held during the first weekend of May.
The CHC CW test is the most active mobile HF contesting event of the year
and can be fascinating for both mobiles and fixed stations alike.
MARAC stands for Mobile Amateur Radio Awards Club. These are the people
who run counties from their cars and who can be found hanging out around
14056 passing out and working new counties most weekends and often even
during the week. I guess they also have an SSB frequency and work other
bands too.
Like many of us who live to contest, these amateurs live to work counties
and put them on the air for the ham community at large. Once they have
confirmed all 3,076 counties, many of them start all over again to work
them "the second time around" (some of them are up to the "Fifth Time"!)
or work them all on 40 CW, 20 SSB, etc. Some of them set a goal of
operating mobile from each and every county in the US - no mean
achievement, to be sure.
I can't tell you much about the history of the CH Contest, but 1997 will
be the 31st annual running, so it's into its fourth decade. I never
noticed it much myself until 1994 when I had to make a business trip to
Dallas. Checking the contest schedule before my trip, I noticed that the
CHC CW and the Texas QSO Party were to be held on the weekend I was to be
there. Thinking I would try running the TQP, I took my mobile gear with
me and set it up my Hertz Taurus.
The TQP didn't start until Saturday morning but the CHC began Friday
night, so I tuned in to see what was going on. There was so much activity
that I soon became hooked and stayed with it the entire weekend. I ended
up operating from about 30 Texas counties, working about 700 stations,
winning the event, and having a lot of fun. The car-shaped wooden plaque
complete with imitation hustler antenna mounted on the rear bumper makes a
great decoration for the shack wall!
I figured that my win in the '94 CHC was due in large part to the TX
propagation advantage, so I did not have high expectations for my '96
operation from New England. I was thus quite surprised to come in a very
close second to a station operating from the midwest, W9MSE, with both of
us managing to edge out stations operating from GA, TX, AL/GA/FL and FL.
The table provides details of the six mobiles who earned the top scores.
These figures reveal some very different operating strategies among the
leading stations.
Six Leading Scores From the 1996
MARAC County Hunter's CW Contest
Station Location Counties QSOs Q/Co Points Pts/Q Mult Score
W9MSE/M IL,IA,MO 52 843 16 5,383 6.4 261 1,404,963
K8HVT/M NY,NJ,CT, 31 701 23 4,921 7.0 283 1,392,643
RI,MA
KB0G/M GA 72 1,039 14 4,907 4.7 266 1,305,262
W3DYA/M TX 43 870 20 4,818 5.5 253 1,218,954
K4SAV/M FL 9 491 55 4,125 8.4 268 1,105,500
KN4Y/M AL,GA,FL 48 818 17 4,068 5.0 247 1,004,796
The Scoring Scheme
The score is the product of QSO points times the number of counties
worked. QSOs with fixed US stations count one point, those with DX
stations count five points, and those with mobiles count 15 points. Until
1994, mobile contacts were worth only five points, but in 1995 their value
was tripled, which made mobile contacts even more important. Mobiles earn
no points by operating from new counties but they can work everyone again
each time they change counties, so it is obviously helpful to hit a large
number of counties, although, as we will see, it is perhaps possible to
operate from too many.
Being able to work a station again when either they or you move into a new
county makes this contest something like the Internet Sprints (SprINT), in
that a relatively small number of participants can turn it into a very
active contest. In 1996, only 15 mobiles and 30 fixed stations sent in
logs, yet four mobiles had more than 800 QSOs and one topped 1,000. With
mobile QSOs worth so much more than those with fixed stations, the mobile
stations are the center of the activity, and the winner is basically the
station who manages to work the most other mobiles.
Incidentally, virtually all of the action in this contest was on 40 and 20
Meters. Many of the mobiles carry two antennas and are able to move
between the two bands at the flip of a switch or two.
Different Strategies
Although the six top mobiles ended up with fairly close scores, there were
significant differences in the composition of their scores and in their
operating strategies. Tim, KB0G, operating in Georgia where the counties
are very small, concentrated on maximizing his QSO total by zipping
quickly from county to county, and he operated in an amazing 72 counties
and ended up with 1,039 Qs. Tim did all the operating and driving by
himself. But although he had 48% more contacts than I did, I ended up
with a slightly higher final score because I had 17 more multipliers and a
significantly higher point-per-QSO value (see the table).
Norm, W3DYA, operating from eastern Texas, pretty much followed KB0G's
strategy, and chalked up the second-highest QSO total. But the east TX
counties take longer to get through so his county total was 29 below Tim's
and his multiplier total was the lowest of the top five stations, possibly
due to difficulties in working some of the other Texas mobiles on 20
meters. Ed, KN4Y, who ran 48 counties in Al, GA and FL also turned in a
QSO total over 800 but fell down in the multiplier count.
The most interesting approach was that of Jerry, K4SAV, operating from
central FL. He operated from only nine different counties, entering most
of them a couple of different times. Jerry had fewer than 500 contacts,
but he made them count and ended up with the second-largest multiplier
total. He averaged of 55 Q's per county compared with 14 for KB0G. KN4Y
had 66% more contacts but Jerry's high concentration of 15 point contacts
and his multiplier were enough to put him ahead. Jerry's strategy seems
to have been born of a good analysis of the rules: he minimized driving,
sacrificed the low-value fixed-station contacts, and maximized his QSO
points and multiplier. His score shows that you don't have to cover
tremendous amounts of territory to do well, although if everyone followed
his formula the contest would be pretty boring on the second day!
Nevertheless, a slight modification of his approach could produce a
winning score.
The winner, Jeff, W9MSE, turned in the best all-round performance,
operating from more counties than everyone except for KB0G in GA.
Interestingly, Jeff produced neither the top QSO total nor the top
multiplier total. Two stations had higher QSO totals and three stations
bested him on multipliers, but he won big on QSO points by maximizing his
contacts with other mobiles. This was probably due to a good balance
between CQing and S&Ping. Jeff did something else smart: he had a
driver, which is allowed and certainly must make life easier.
My own strategy required me to drive nearly the whole time in order to hit
as many as possible of the relatively large (at least in terms of driving
time) New England counties, and to make sure that I swept the band just
before leaving and just after entering each county. This is probably why
I worked more multipliers than anyone else and why I managed such a high
point-per-QSO ratio. I also had quite a large number of five-point DX
contacts - about 115 - the equivalent of about 600 US fixed station
contacts. My east coast location probably gave me an advantage here. On
the other hand, my QSO total was pretty low compared with most of my
competitors. This was related to the fact that I was only able to reach
31 counties.
In an effort to stay fairly close to home, I planned a circular route
through Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Statan Island, the more populous
parts of New Jersey, then through CT, RI, part of MA, and back into CT to
finish close to home. I practically destroyed my antennas on the low Long
Island underpasses, got repeatedly lost in New Jersey (no county signs!),
and had other problems of the sort that you don't have operating from
home. But the additional strategic challenges and problems of this nature
are what make this a fun contest to me (although it does not always seem
that way at the time). I hope that by planning a better route I can reach
more counties this year.
We CHC participants benefited quite a bit from the mobiles operating in
the Texas QSO Party. N5RZ, W3DYA, KG5U, K5GA and KI3L were among the
Texas mobiles appearing in my log. Ralph, N5RZ, was especially active
(and loud) from the Texas Panhandle and most of us in the CHC worked him
many times. Ralph and the others even were willing to work us when they
did not get credit for the contact. Multipliers for them are states so
when we change counties but remain in the same state we are dupes for them
although they are new contacts for us. Since the exchanges are similar,
some TQP stations send in logs for both contests but most did not. I
suspect that the MARAC results would have been different had they done so.
A Level Playing Field?
It seems to me that with just a few changes, any of these six mobiles
could have won this contest. It also seems to me that a mobile operating
from just about anywhere in the continental U.S. would have had a shot at
winning in 1996. Although there were no active mobiles from the west
coast, a fixed station in California (KC6CNV) racked up more multipliers
than any of us (as did K8CW operating from Ohio), suggesting that a mobile
could have done well from that part of the country. This has made me
wonder if there is something about this contest that acts to minimize the
advantage which stations in certain regions often have in domestic
contests. Is this a contest with a naturally level playing field in which
it is overwhelmingly the operator's strategy and skill and not his QTH
that determines the victor?
Certainly the antennas used by mobile stations are generally similar,
eliminating antenna difference as a major factor. And the scoring system
means that mobiles must seek each other out to pick up not only the
multipliers but the points. Each mobile is giving out a more-or-less
unique set of multipliers, meaning that others must look carefully for
them in order to win. This may have the effect of penalizing stations who
merely call CQ the whole time. Stations close to each other might not be
able to work each other on 20 Meters, but they can work on 40 if they try.
Yet, it cannot be denied that in 1996 there were more mobile participants
from the south (TX, GA, AL, FL) than the north, reversing the mismatch in
supply/demand that usually benefits the south in a domestic contest, and
that this was an important factor in explaining why the two top scores
came from the midwest and the east. But for reasons I mentioned above, I
do think that this contest provides a more level playing field than most
other domestic contests, and I will be looking to prove or disprove this
theory in the coming years. In the meantime, the impression that this is
a contest that can be won from my part of the country is providing the
motivation for me to plan carefully for the next one.
50-60 Mobiles Competing?
There are quite a few stations who operate mobile in one or another of the
state QSO parties, and I often wonder what it would be like if they all
got on for this one nationwide event. 50-60 mobiles putting over 1,000
multipliers on the air, constantly changing counties and moving from band
to band? That would be some contest!
This year's County Hunter's Contest CW will be held May 3-5. I'll be in
there trying to prove that it can be won from New England. If you have
mobile capability, I hope you'll join in and see how well you can do from
your part of the country. If you don't, you'll still find it a lot of fun
following us mobiles around the map.
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