Hi Dave,
Many contests suffer the tapering off of activity after a while. Monday night
football, super-bowls, debates, Sunday afternoon sweepstakes doldrums, family
time, etc.
And nowadays we are constantly pressed to add something "new and better" into
our lives, and if we take more on, then there is less relax time for our other
stuff.
Maybe I'm old school but still highly enjoy hearing a weak signal, turning the
beam to peak it, and trying to work it. Ahhh, that xyz station improvement I
made this summer is working...or not...or pick a beam direction and go fishing
to see what you can catch. Make your own decisions when and whether to call
toward a population density direction or toward missing grids. SSB vs. FT8. To
me that is the name of the game. I do not like the idea of pre-arranged
contacts or arranging them in real time, that seems more like DXing than
Contesting and not very satisfying.
The sprints are a good fun break from the workday, but are 4 hours a bit much?
It's supposed to be a sprint not a marathon, so maybe with shorter hours the
station activity would be more consistent throughout.
73,
Chet, N8RA
-----Original Message-----
From: VHFcontesting
<vhfcontesting-bounces+chetsubaccount=snet.net@contesting.com> On Behalf Of
David Olean
Sent: Thursday, October 1, 2020 5:01 PM
To: (Radio) VHF Contesting <VHFcontesting@contesting.com>; 222 MHz ACTIVITY
<222Activity@Groups.io>
Subject: [VHFcontesting] An idea for the sprints.
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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