On Mon, 2010-03-29 at 22:13 -0700, webform@b41h.net wrote:
> He said the
> first night was good, but the second night was intolerably slow. From
> 2am til
> 7am Saturday night, he made a grand total of 59 Q's in 5 hours and
> that's with
> a 4el 40m beam at 150'.
I can offer some speculative explanation based on my own experience as a
SOAB LP/TS station - just 100 watts and a Carolina Windom on 80-10. I
think it wasn't just a propagation effect you observed.
Early in the contest, 20 (and then 40) pretty much filled up with big
gun "local" (non-DX) stations on every possible frequency. For quite a
while, it was pretty tough for my LP to break through any of the pileups
- everyone running picks the loudest caller, so it's a while before the
LP or weaker-signal DX stations can break through. I'm on the
California coast right by the water, and I could hear quite a few
Asia/Oceania stations trying to call the Big Runners further East, but
like me they were unable to break through.
Later on, when things settled down, it was possible to work the Runners
even with LP and some distance. It took maybe an hour or so to
methodically work across the band and work everyone. That part was
fun.
Then of course when you scan through the band again, it's all the same
stations, so there's nobody new to work, and of course no space to try
CQing. Try 10/15 for a while, come back to 20/40 and it's still the
same stations and wall of RF. I'm pretty sure propagation was OK to
Europe, but except for an hour or so on Sunday I couldn't even hear any
EU Big Runners through the NA wall of CQers. It gets boring so you move
on to another band and then shut off the rig and go do something else.
I suspect the little pistols in JA, VK, etc did the same.
On Day 2 (actually afternoon/night 2 in CA), 20 and 40 still had the
same Big Runners CQing on the same frequencies, so there was little new
to work. I didn't bother staying up late at all.
So, as an LP station with a simple antenna, 10 and 15 were what kept me
interested. Everything I could do on 20 and 40 I did in a few hours, an
10 and 15 yielded most of the DX, and most of the fun, for me. It was
just too painful to try to work 20 or 40 for very long.
Even on 10 and 15, the propagation to SA and Asia from my QTH was fine
for many hours even well after dark, and there was lots of space on the
bands. There just weren't very many stations to work except for the DX
club contest stations - nowhere near enough to keep you interested for
36 hours.
Highlight of the contest for me - qso #001 was with 6W2SC in Senegal on
15 meters - just a few minutes after pre-contest talks with several E51s
on 10 meters. 10/15 open Cook Islands to Senegal from CA at the same
time - with a dipole.
The bands were open - there just weren't that many stations on the air.
There are quite a few local new hams in our community who have tried out
contesting, and after the initial thrill they don't seem to come back.
Without a serious "contesting station" it's simply not much fun I think.
Someone I talked with in VK reported a similar lack of interest from the
masses of hams there with less-than-stellar setups. So maybe it's a
widespread effect.
Hope this provides some food for thought. Maybe somehow contests need
to attract more little pistols...?
73,
Jack
DE K3FIV
QTH Point Arena, CA
CM88eu
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