I cannot dispute the statistical analysis, but numbers don't always tell the
whole story. This is my NY "take" just from my experience during the last
two months or so--I'm a newbie at this and don't operate SO2R (unfortunately
I couldn't get on for the "no dupes" test). First and foremost, geography
plays a big role. Being really east of the Mississippi I find that unless
there is really long skip on 20, like last week when I was loud in Calif and
made 36 qsos, including alot of dupes, the west coast has a pipeline to the
mid west and the mid west/south have a north/south pipeline to each other.
Very few are pointing at the east coast. So it is much easier for the loud
stations to dupe each other at high speed than to listen for the weaker
ones, especially if we go a little slower. This is even more pronounced on
40 where stations are weaker still (pointing west or north/south?) and the
loud stations close to each other just dupe over and over. As for 80, I
almost never hear anyone, although I read about some stations working each
other over and over. I guess its nice to have a strong local station also
participating so you can dupe him every other qso, especially when SO2R.
So, when signals are loud its nice to be able to dupe at higher speeds, but
when signals are weak, it is harder to break the pile-ups. The choice of
dupe vs no dupe also raises a philosophical question--Is the skill-set only
to run as fast as you can with the same loud signals over and over, or being
able to pull weak signals out of the noise and getting a really high mult
count? In the no dupes case, the digger with good antennas has an advantage
when the loud stations are worked out. With dupes, rate is king. Last week
when we had long skip, the mid westerners commented that they couldn't hear
much on either coast. I heard some of the Texas area stations really weakly
when when I beamed that way, but decided to dupe the loud W6's instead of
spending alot of time with repeats. So that's the take of a really newbie
without SO2R. 73 and see you around. Saul K2XA
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