Leigh,
I agree with you on most of what you said. If anything, I'm usually guilty
of going to 40 and 80 too soon in an attempt to get away from the higher
bands. The problem is with the operator on the other end. The typical
"casual" contester might have a tribander on the roof of the garage, and low
wires on 40 and 80. He might not even have room for something on 80. On
the other hand, he has a resonably good signal on 10 and 15 meters and does
most of his operating there. That disparity is usually enough to keep us
out of the top spots. If you look at the band breakdowns from the best guys
in my neck of the woods (N0AT, N0KK, K0OB, etc.) you'll see that none of
them do much on 10 meters in SS. In the last CW SS I made about 50 Q's
total on 10 meters. Meanwhile the guys south and west of here were doing
well. It's tough to recover those Q's later because those operators aren't
going to be around at 0500Z on 80 meters.
The aurora actually hurt us on the low bands more than the higher bands due
to the high absorbtion. 80 was pretty bad from here, noisy and the signals
were way down. 40 and 20 were the "money bands for us.
Thanks for the input, and I hope to see everybody next Feburary in the MNQP!
73 Steve K0SR
----- Original Message -----
From: Leigh S. Jones <kr6x@kr6x.com>
To: Steve Root <steve.root@culligan4water.com>
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 3:32 PM
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] SS Question
> When 20 closes down from California, both on Saturday night
> and Sunday night, you've suddenly got a gigantic advantage
> over California. On 40 and 80 meters you're loud into the entire
> country, and given a good station you suddenly find yourself
> with a great advantage.
>
> Now, I'm not trying to tell you that this past SS contest wasn't
> hurt by the aurora. This was a bad contest from anyplace to
> the north. But that's the exception, not the norm. The norm
> is for your area to dominate for 7 hours on Saturday night and
> another two hours on Sunday night.
>
> If you're not dominating during those hours, I'd like to suggest
> the following formula:
>
> 80 M full wave quad/delta loop with the apex at 110 feet
> (oriented with all wires running N-S)
> 40 M put the quad loop inside the 80 M loop with the apex
> at about 80-90 feet
>
> Now, stations like W0SD have bigger stuff to the west of
> you, so don't expect miracles, but during those hours you
> should be able to keep up with nearly anyone in the contest.
> W5WMU has stacked 3 element yagis on 40 meters, and
> will do some dominating himself -- and K5TR will be
> competitive too. But W9WNV used to win the entire SS
> contest with less than you'd have on that tower...
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Steve Root" <steve.root@culligan4water.com>
> To: <CQ-Contest@contesting.com>
> Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 4:02 AM
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] SS Question
>
>
> > K4XS wrote:
> >
> > "We all have geographical advantages in whatever contest we are
> in."
> >
> > Bill, we're still trying to figure out which contest that would be
> for us up
> > here in MN :)
> >
> > 73 Steve K0SR
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------
> > The world's top contesters battle it out in Finland!
> > THE OFFICIAL FILM of WRTC 2002 now on professional DVD and VHS!
> > http://home1.pacific.net.sg/~jamesb/
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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> > CQ-Contest@contesting.com
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>
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