Friends,
Last weekend was my second semiserious VHF contest and I had a fantastic time
-- those Sunday Es were true spice on what was already a fun weekend. I have
been contesting on the HF bands since '63 but never had a rig for VHF.
"Thank You" to so many of you that have spent time answering my nonstop
questions about propagation, operating procedures, etc., on my favorite VHF
band, 6 meters.
Somewhere in the mentoring process, I was led to believe that sitting on the
national calling frequency 50.125 was taboo during normal operating and most
certainly during contests.
During last week's contest, it did appear as though most ops did not use the
frequency for long stretches of CQing and running Qs. I did hear some
competitors drop a CQ in to see what if any opening might be present but they
generally moved off to some declared frequency after make one or two
contacts.
At other times, I observed one and in many cases, several single and mult-op
stations beating the heck out of the frequency, themselves and casual users
as they attempted to work a "run." It was disappointing to often hear these
stations calling CQ over the top of each other, a practice that totally
eliminating any chance for a calling station to be heard by any of them.
Other times I heard more than one of these CQers come back to the same
station in a manner that suggests that everybody logged the new caller when
in fact an outside observer could clearly hear that the new caller only
worked one station.
During the moments I was checking out what was going on, I noted that only
one regular Top Ten finisher here inside my tropo zone used the frequency a
great deal and at least one multi-op planted themselves on the national
calling frequency for long periods of times. Maybe even more worthy of note
is the fact that apparently the majority of the other major competitors have
determined that using the national calling frequency is not an ethical
contesting practice and resisted the temptation to do the same thing.
I was curious if there was any advantage to using the frequency instead of
some other one further up the band. I tried a few CQs on the frequency
myself this weekend and did experience at least short term rates that
suggested one might possibly improve his score by spending a lot of
discretionary CQing-time on .125. But, even my not-so-bright mind was able
to conclude that if we all sat there, the chaos factor would be horrendous.
So, back to my questions:
1- Is working long runs of stations on 50.125 in accordance with the rules
of the more popular VHF contests?
2- If the answer to #1 is Yes, then I ask is it ethical in light of the
fact that only a limited number of stations appear to be able to coexist at
the same time?
3- If the answer to #1 is Yes, then I ask is this operating practice fair
treatment to our fellow hams who are not interested in our contests and would
still like to use the national calling frequency (which apparently is not
call the Contesting National Calling Frequency on certain weekends.)
4- If the answer to #2 & 3 is No, what if anything is done by the contest
sponsors and contest community to rein in the abusers?
I am going to make a guess (in the same vein as "Will the sun come up
tomorrow?") that this is not a new subject but maybe it is one that needs
some discussion for the new ops to consider.
Thanks for another lesson in VHF Contest 101.
73, Dennis K7BV/1
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