Hello to everyone interested in the "Assistance" concept for VHF
contesting....
My last post was made at 2AM, so I am not sure how coherent it was.
Hopefully, not too bad.....
Les-N1LF made an observation recently that was, I believe, terribly
important. He observed that A)All VHF contesting is local, B)Those in
the famous "Golden Corridor" have a tremendous advantage over the rest
of us who live in the sticks(the high population density of hams), and
that C)To a very large extent, those that oppose "assistance" live in
the NE. LES, I hope I have stated the gist of your post correctly.
Jay-W9RM made a post wherein he talked about ANNOUNCEMENTS rather than
Assistance. I think that this is a genius idea. The concept of
"assistance" has become way too fuzzy and ill defined. It means
different things to different folks. The Anti-Assistance folks have
taken advantage of this in various nefarious ways. To way too many,
"assistance" means making real time schedules during the
contest....which I don't really see anything wrong with, but the legacy
HFers go into heart fibrillations whenever this is mentioned. By the
way, Announcements would make "real time scheduling" unnecessary.
I propose that we start talking about making ANNOUNCEMENTS in VHF
contesting. An ANNOUNCEMENT will have to be carefully defined to
prevent abuse. Although CQ does not mention announcements, it is clear
that their concept is that IF you are calling CQ on digital meteor
scatter(MS) or digital EME, you can announce Call, Frequency, and
Sequence ONLY on the Internet reflectors, packet clusters, whatever.
Such an announcement does not convey any QSO information, only that you
are calling CQ and where you are located. When you receive a call and
get a good decode, you will receive both his call and your call, so all
QSO information has passed over the radio path--thus satisfying Tilton's
Rule.
I propose that an Announcement should be defined to be your Call,
Frequency, and Sequence ONLY. The idea of posting Call, Frequency, and
Sequence ONLY was first brought forward by a very well known Pacific
Northwest VHFer(and a couple of others as I recall), so it is not my
idea, but it is an incredibly good idea. If we follow the CQ idea, an
Announcement would be permitted only for stations calling CQ on digital
MS or digital EME.
ASIDE1: Why allow Announcements for those modes and not for others??
Digital EME signals are quite often not detectable by ear. So, you
could "turn the dial" until the cows come home and you would never hear
a weak digital EME signal. You would tune right past it. However, I
work such signals all the time and others can as well, IF they can find
them. If I Announce "CQ K5QE 144.142MHz Second" then everyone knows
where I am. Just tune there and see if you can work me. I want to
stress this--An Announcement does not WORK anyone, you have to actually
do that yourself. Only then can you put them in the log. As Jay-W9RM
has so carefully pointed out, if someone intent on cheating were to
enter me into his log just based on my Announcement, when the log
checking process was applied, the bogus QSO would be removed from his
log and he would be penalized points. It seems to me that no one is
stupid enough to do this.....but I am probably wrong on that.
ASIDE2: Meteor scatter is not a weak signal mode, but signals are
essentially random in time. If you carefully tune a given frequency,
say 50.265MHz, you most likely will not hear anything. After you tune
away trying to find a signal somewhere else, a large burn may occur.
What this means is that tuning for MS signals is essentially a waste of
time....you will very likely never hear anything. A simple Announcement
solves this problem very nicely. Now stations all around the country
know where I am calling CQ. IF they are within MS range, they can try
to call me and hopefully a QSO will result. This system is FAR superior
to the system that we now use(everyone calls on 50.260MHz with an offset
frequency where the QSO is supposed to actually take place). Seasoned
MS ops know the current system and for them it works OK. Newer ops
really don't understand what is going on and contacts with them are
frequently lost because they don't understand the idea of moving to make
a QSO. An Announcement would tell everyone where I am calling CQ with
no need for the "bait and switch" method we now have.
I believe that we should all contact our Director and request that
Announcements be allowed in VHF contesting for digital MS and digital
EME. This is not going to rend the fabric of VHF contesting, but it
sure will make it a lot more fun as dozens of "rare" grids will now find
their way into the logs. I don't think that this is too much of a
stretch for the folks at the League. If it is, then we are DOOMED as my
son likes to say.
I forwarded my previous post to my Director, and I will do the same with
this one. We need to try to get the Directors to understand what needs
to be done....
73 Marshall K5QE
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