I traveled to DN02 this contest...had no phone or internet. Worked my ×@$
off and spent a fair amount of money.
In the end I had 18 Q's....Would I have done better with spotting, yes I
think so.
I'm not sure I'll travel to any remote grids again without access to the
world.
It was fun and a beautiful trip but also was frustrating.
Very hard to justify that much treasure , both in sweat , time and money.
Like it or not I am good with spotting and I doubt that anyone who wants
mults, particularly rare ones would complain
Steve / KE7IHG
On Sep 16, 2015 11:50 AM, "Mark Spencer" <mark@alignedsolutions.com> wrote:
> A few comments re this.
>
> I've found that MS / long haul digital qso's are challenging to make while
> roving / portable especially if I don't have good Internet connectivity.
> Over 90 percent of the successful MS / long haul digi mode QSO's that I
> have made outside of contests would not have happened without constant
> access to the internet by both me and the other station. These QSO's on
> average probably took 30 minutes or so to complete.
>
> During the last contest I spent about an hour in total of my six and a
> half hours of prime operating time in a semi rare grid trying to work MS
> with no results. About half this time was spent in an effort to work a
> station in a rare grid that prior to the contest had announced they were
> going to run on digi modes. Deciding to run MS / digi modes was my choice
> though and on balance I'd probably do it again as I would have liked to
> work the rare grid, and I figured I had a reasonable chance of picking up
> at least one more grid in that hour, but things didn't work out that way.
>
> (Between the 11am pst contest start time, and my desire to have a two hour
> tear down and packup process done before nightfall I had about 6 and a half
> hours to run the entire station. I was able to keep the 2M station up
> until the very end. Staying overnight is also apparently not allowed in
> that location.)
>
> I doubt I will run MS or long haul digi modes in a future contest without
> a pre arranged sched on a frequency other than the customary calling
> frequencies, and preferably some form of near real time communications with
> the other station to confirm that they are looking for me.
>
> In hindsight during the last contest I'm almost certain I would have
> picked up more grids and or bands by focusing on terrestrial ssb / CW for
> another hour, but hindsight is 20/20 and I wanted to work the rare grid
> more than I wanted to simply run up my score.
>
> To answer the question though, In my case at least the answers is that
> yes, MS / digi efforts did in hindsight reduce my roving contribution.
> I'll put more thought into running these modes or not in future contests.
> All that being said I do like having the option to run these modes and I'm
> fine with the rules as they are. I just need to put more thought into how
> I choose to run my station.
>
> 73's Mark S
> VE7AFZ
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>
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