Perhaps it was reading the writing on the wall(changes in cqww rules about
packet
self-spotting) that caused a seemingly spontaneous cessation of the endless
self-spotting of years past in the ARRL 160 and a much lower rate in the CQWW
160
this season, at least on the east coast. I was pleased because I always
found that
distasteful. We probably could not make an effective rule to formalize a
prohibition of
this practice(you could always just have a buddy call you out every half
hour) but it
would be good if we could at least have a gentleman's agreement to avoid
self-spotting.
Most of the time the self-spotting is an effort to pick up the extremely dull
daytime hours
in these contests which brings me to my next point. I think both of these
contests
would be more enjoyable if they were structured with a time off period al
ARRL 10 meter
contest. At the K2WI ARRL 160 and WW2Y CQWW 160 operations the daytime rate
never seems to be bigger than 15 per hour so a six hour break would reduce
qso totals
by a maximum of 90 assuming the qsos were not made up in other hours. Since
these
are all low-point-value qsos I don't think this would change the character of
the contest
too much. The big numbers come from the nighttime dx contacts. For example
in WW2Y CQ160 70% of the qso points were from 10-point qsos.
I propose a single six hour off period for all classes in these contests.
Let's take a
break, sleep, be with our families, walk the dog, do whatever to recharge our
batteries
for some serious competition during the night hours.
ARRL Comments:
Missed the competition from KN8Z this year. AB4RU did a great job. I was
scared when I heard you guys running EU like crazy during one of our doldrum
periods. Would
like to hear from you guys via e-mail.
CQWW Comments:
The multiop class keeps getting more and more competitive. Congrats to W2GD
on a
fine performance. The results were much more decisive in past years and you
may have an indication now of how crippled we were by line noise and poor
beverages. It took us a long time to realize that our beverages were spoiled
by putting the new elements of our TX array too close, meaning that half of
them had no F/B ratio including
the critical EU.
W1KM came out strong! I have boated past his QTH on the coast of MA (my
father-in-law lives down the road) so I know how nice that location is.
I remember the days when well-equipped single op stations operated well by
the likes of K5NA and K1ZM used to come out ahead of the multiops
occasionally. As competition drives the multiops to set up better stations I
think that will happen much less frequently if ever again.
The conditions in both these contests were the best ever. We worked our
first ever JAs
in both contests, working 2 in ARRL and 7 in CQWW. I have never heard the JA
window so crowded that there was QRM like in this CQWW. I would be very
interested
to know how many JAs other stations were able to work as I heard the 4s
getting through very quickly.
See you all next time! Rob K2WI waqi@aol.com
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