It isn't much of an idea, more a suggestion, to not abandon the VHF
sprints when activity dies down after the initial spurt of activity. I
was not a big fan of opening up chat pages for coordination of contacts
in VHF contests. My reasoning was that it favored stations that had good
internet connectivity and penalized those that did not.
That being said, we now have the ability to set up schedules for almost
impossible contacts simply by coordinating on internet sites dedicated
to such things. So why did everyone bail out after an hour or so on the
222 Sprint? The few diehards left were ones that I had already
contacted. It would have been great to try some long haul tropo
contacts on CW or even FT4/FT8 with stations that are normally not in
range. Trying and failing at a 400+ mile QSO with a 25 watt station or
trying a meteor scatter contact is much more agreeable than spending an
hour calling CQ and tuning around on a almost empty band with no takers
and no results. A few posts for skeds by several of the diehards also
went unheeded towards the latter half of the sprint. The last hour,
when things die down is the time to experiment and see what your station
can do even if it is outside of your comfort zone. The worst that can
happen is that the path does not work! Then, there is the problem of
which chat page to monitor. Having poor connectivity makes monitoring a
number of them impossible for many operators. On a good day, I might be
able to cover two chat pages. We should set up a standardization for
the sprints so people are all looking at the same place.
So next time, think twice about quitting early! Do something exciting
instead.
73
Dave K1WHS
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