Greetings,
Although I "play" often in both HF and VHF contests, I firmly believe
that HF and VHF are two completely different landscapes to operate within.
On the VHF side, I think the operators adapt well to changing conditions, or
simply survive the weekend as we experienced this last go around with rather
poor conditions.
What we all seem to struggle with is this process of renewal. It's
just not happening for the new guys and sadly many of the seasoned activists
have quietly scaled back or choose not to participate anymore. If we do not
adapt and innovate new ways to increase QSO coverage, or energize and active
more participation in general, like the dinosaur the activity events we will
devolve into obscurity.
As contesters in general go, I am of the opinion that we each have our
own interests as to we are trying to justify changing, for my benefit, and
also benefit to all. I'm guessing Marshall has the MM's position here in
the west gulf, I can't speak for the Rovers but I do feel like their
challenges are similar yet include challenges that are quite different than
what fixed stations are faced with. Sadly around here in Texas the
microwave groups seem to be thoroughly alienated. And the general hams and
SOAB ops who are trying to make it work with attic antennas and lucky ones
without HOA's are looking to connect, in many cases for the first time are
not feeling included (think VHF novice round up). I think some kind of
spotting or tweeting or non-IP based method to communicate someone is on the
air from EM12 or elsewhere would be healthy and invigorating to everyone.
I feel strongly that if self-spotting or announcing is allowed in one
category, why not all? Someone said it gives away the grid square or part
of the exchange. You still have to complete the over the air exchange, or
whatever it is off the moon or some meteor trail. You can take this through
a tedious analysis, or simply take the bull by the horns and just do it.
For example, I would bet 99% of the ops have phones capable of receiving a
tweet. Instead of chat rooms I would suggest tweeting out (I think someone
else already suggested this). Maybe 2-3 tags would cover all the lower 3-4
bands and you can choose who to follow. I wonder what would happen if
during the January event the vast majority took to aggressively spotting and
self announcing. Seems to me the shoe would quickly be on the other foot
and everyone gets what they want. Lobbying for change after the fact should
be easy as politically it is a no brainer.
I always enjoy the debates and discussion here. Hope to see many of
you in the January test.
73 Mike K9MK
-----Original Message-----
From: VHFcontesting [mailto:vhfcontesting-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf
Of Keith Morehouse
Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2013 5:39 PM
To: Marshall-K5QE
Cc: VHF Contesting
Subject: Re: [VHFcontesting] Announcements and VHF contesting....
Allowing such a thing for digital operation is fine and in line with what CQ
allows in their VHF test. Personally, I would take this one step FURTHER
and allow ANNOUNCEMENTS for any band or mode at any time, for any class of
entry. For example:
(announce) W9RM DM58 144.210 CQ CW EAST
The idea is to get the activity level up and for the vast number of
non-serious contesters, knowing someone was there and trying to work guys
could do it. Sure, in the beginning, the chats might be clogged to overflow
with these messages, but, in the long term, I believe only those who are
successful in working people after one of these ANNONCEMENTS would persist
in doing it.
Jay W9RM
Keith J Morehouse
Managing Partner
Calmesa Partners G.P.
Montrose, CO
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 4:55 PM, Marshall-K5QE <k5qe@k5qe.com> wrote:
> 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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