Decreasing activity has hurt some of us greatly.
It is painfully obvious that there are not as many stations active as
their used to be. Or at the very least, fewer well equipped / high power
stations, which is a big problem for those of us in outlying areas. I
did very well this time only due to spectacular conditions.
As evidenced by the lack of any QSOs in my own grid and only one 2 meter
QSO in an adjacent grid, most others in this area have given up
completely. There are assorted reasons but in part it is due to having
so few stations we can hear and work, especially or those up this way
who had modest stations. It's no fun listening to white noise all weekend!
FT8 can dig a few dB below CW levels but it does not appear to make up
for the lack of high power stations.
Of course for me the situation is compounded by low activity in this
area, as there is less incentive for people to point this way.
Paul N1BUG
On 9/12/22 08:32, k3sk@buckwalter.co wrote:
I blame most of the weekend on very bad propagation and mostly general lack
of participation.
This was both, the worst propagation in 30 years I ever remember during a
VHF contest. And, it was also my first ever contest using a digital mode
(FT8). I worked as many SSB contacts as I could find, with frequent moves to
that portion of the band. I only heard 4 or 5 CW calls and all but one was
stations I already had logged.
During the later hours almost all FT8 I copied were dupes, calls I worked on
SSB or FT8 earlier. This was no different than other VHF contests, where
only the diehards and power-house multi-op stations just keep hammering
away. I did the same thing. I kept visiting the SSB calling frequencies and
called over and over with no response.. Then I'd go to FT8 and do the same
thing, getting the same results.
Regardless of the mode, it was tough digging out a contact. An example that
proves this point is 222 MHz. Of the contest bands it's not a normally
active band but it's one I have and enjoy. I run a full KW and 4 10 element
LFAs on 222 MHz. In the past on this band I've worked 20 to 50 QSOs,
sometimes more. Over this entire weekend I worked 9 contacts! 5 of them were
on SSB and 4 were on FT8. There's nothing wrong with the equipment as half
the QSOs were 400+ mile contacts, Q5 copy and some of those were SSB. On FT8
I kept hearing the same 3 stations over and over again all weekend.
There just wasn't anyone there to work, regardless of mode.
de K3SK
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