I participated once in the SC QSO Party which allows in state counties
as multipliers. I would call CQ and focused on out of state as much
as possible as that seemed to me to be the point of the event. But to
get multipliers I had to seek out the in-state mobiles and would often
tune across the bands listening for them and other fixed SC stations.
Heard MANY in-state stations just sitting around talking to each other
waiting for the mobiles to reach the next county. I'd listen to them
say things like 'K4ABC will be in XYZ county in 15 minutes', and then
they'd go back to rag chewing. They were not interested in working
outside the state. But they did some good, they told me how long I had
to keep calling CQ before checking back for the mobile! The Salmon
Run people were glad to work me. We just added a couple things so our
contact counted for both events. Other than a mobile I never heard any
other SC stations calling CQ. So why have a QSO party? Haven't
entered again even though I was a new contester pretty much clueless
as to any type of strategy to use I won the in-state plaque. (OK,
another big part of the reason was that besides not really feeling
like a contest the plaque had my call sign wrong). With the GAQP
counting states and provinces as mults it might not be as bad as that
but I believe you would still have too many GA to GA contacts as K4BAI
said.
Disclaimer: I was part of the K4HYB team at Rick's Saturday.
As to the self spotting, it pretty much seems to be a non-issue. I
didn't reply to this right away as I like to think things through as
objectively as I can when this type of discussion comes up. Forget
that the rules say you can do it. Like the accuser, Rick apparently
didn't know it was allowed either. I didn't read his posting, but
Rick said he did not give frequencies that K4HYB was actually
operating on. That would seem to be pretty easily verified and I
haven't read that people disagreed with that statement. It is not
unusual during a contest for someone to ask a running station to move
to 40 (or 80, or 15, or...) so they can get the mult and have the run
station say "Not now, but I'm moving there at the top of the hour".
Well known operators do that all the time. I don't get those private,
gossipy type emails or phone calls that others do, but I've never
heard any complaints about that being self spotting. The two
situations aren't significantly different to me. Some would call that
a scheudle, which is stretching it. Only an approximate time and no
specific frequency was agreed upon. How is that a schedule? Yet
everyone listening to that exchange knows about where and when to look
for the run station. Pretty close to the same information as in a
spot (stations aren't always found on the spotting freq) -- and pretty
much the same information Rick apparently communicated. It seems as
if people are just looking for something to complain about. Take him
at his word that he didn't mean any harm. As was pointed out -- his
station is such that he didn't need to self spot.
Kevan
N4XL
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