Hi Marshall et al,
Thanks for the great Falklands EME DXPEDITION! The card you have sent
QSO partners is Beautiful!
You and those not living in the NorthEast are probably unaware that
Phil's note to the list did not arrive ex nihilo. Rather, at the
recently convened NEWS conference there were two sessions involving
several dozen active VHF and UP'ers discussing the best way to make use
of the new ARRL VHF and UP rules. Phil chaired both of these sessions.
Lots of bright guys were in attendance and contributed :)
Chat pages were discussed along with other newly available modalities at
these sessions, which spanned at least a couple of hours of freewheeling
discussion.
Many operators indicated that they did not want "one more thing" to have
to watch during a contest. That is, they didn't want to have to keep an
eye on a chat page.
It was pointed out that the major logging programs e.g. N1MM+ and
WriteLog already have cluster access built into them. Furthermore, it
was pointed out that it is simple to set filters to limit spots to
frequencies of 50 MHz and above [or even to set filters band by band].
Filters can also be set up simply by geographical region [e.g. states,
as long as the call is in the usdb database]. For those of you who are
not familiar with filters, you can get a taste of what they can do at:
http://www.dxcluster.org/main/filtering_en.html
So it is a simple matter to set up the cluster spot window in your
logging program to include any/all bands 40 MHz and above, and no HF
bands. It is a simple matter to setup the cluster spot window to
include whatever geographic region that you want. You can limit by
geographic area if you desire, or keep it wide open.
Those present were much more amenable to keeping an eye on a cluster
spot window in a logging program than they were to adding a chat window
to their armamentarium, possibly because many of them are also HF
contesters, and are already used to keeping an eye on their logger's
cluster spot window.
So this idea has already been discussed by dozens of East Coast VHF
stations, and we are going to proceed at this point, after extensive and
freewheeling discussion, by using the clusters. Every operator is free
to use or not use the clusters, chat pages, whatever. Certainly there
will be changes in operating procedures as we proceed. But for ANY of
these methods to work, a critical mass of users is necessary. At this
point we are going to try to achieve this using the clusters. It is
most important for hams within a region to all follow a similar path.
If hams in different regions follow different paths, the detrimental
effect of disparate behavior will be much less than the effect of hams
within a region following multiple different paths, and thus ensuring
that no path reaches the critical mass of participants required for success.
There are other ideas that we discussed at the NEWS Conference on how to
make the clusters even more useful. I believe that there will be more
information forthcoming on all of this at some point in the near to
moderately near future. As I am not the one writing up the Conference
Summary, I will not attempt to offer a more specific time frame.
Others who were at the sessions may wish to chime in. Different
observers always have differences in their reporting of any event.
Very 73,
Roger Rehr W3SZ
http://www.nitehawk.com/w3sz
On 4/28/2015 2:45 PM, Marshall-K5QE wrote:
Hello Phil and other VHF contesters.....
In the past, I have never thought the DX Cluster was worth anything
for VHF. Occasionally, you would see a few 6M spots, but almost never
did you see a spot for 2M, never mind for anything above that. Phil
has brought up something that needs to be considered and solved before
very long. Now that we can Announce our Call, Frequency, and
Sequence(and a few other things too), we need to figure out HOW and
WHERE to post so that more QSOs result.
Because VHF is regional by nature(except for EME), posting to a
national resource(cluster, chat page, reflector, whatever) is not
going to be productive. For those of us in TX, it does not do much
good for someone in WA to post their desire for meteor scatter
contacts. Clearly, the reverse is true as well. I have been mulling
this problem over in my mind and have not come up with any great
solution.
I have thought that we might have regional chat pages where you can
look for stations in your general region. For meteor scatter, we
might have something like west coast, central US, and east coast.
Clearly, for many, these areas overlap. I can see problems with this
idea, but if everyone posts everything to PingJockey, 1)their server
will probably collapse, 2)the posts would be running up the screen so
fast that you would never see anyone that you wanted to work, even if
they were there.
I just returned from a 2M EME DXpedition to the Falkland Islands. I
had Dan-N5TM make me a "private" chat room just for that expedition.
It was great. Anyone in the chat room was just there to work us....we
did not have to endure anyone talking about their feedlines or
concealing their flagpole verticals. While this is a wonderful
approach for DXpeditions and it could be the basis of the east coast,
west coast, and central US chat pages, it might not be the correct
approach for a contest environment. In other words, this idea might
be unworkable for one reason or another.
SO, I ask everyone interested in this idea, to think hard about how we
can best use the new resources that we are finally allowed. Maybe we
will have to segregate things by mode, so that stations seeking MS
contacts will have chat pages / reflectors dedicated to just that. I
just don't know how this should be made to work. We have lots of
bright guys out there, now is the time for us to figure this one out.....
See you in the June ARRL and the July CQ WW VHF contests......
73 Marshall K5QE
On 4/28/2015 9:59 AM, Phil Theis wrote:
Greetings,
During the last two sprints several of us have been experimenting
with the DX Cluster.
Lets see if we can generate more activity this Wednesday evening by
generating spots.
Do it on anyone you hear calling CQ. But also it would be nice to
know who is lurking on the bands. That way we know to turn antennas
in the right direction and then call cq.
For instance, if I know that VE3ZV is calling others, I can turn my
antenna and call CQ in his direction.
So figure out your logger, connect it to the internet, and generate
some spots during the Sprint.
I will be on ON4KST as well, but the spotting network makes things so
much easier by putting the information right there in front of you in
the logger. I use N1MM+, it is working great for VHF.
See you all on. Let hope for some great conditions.
73,
Phil K3TUF FN10we
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