On 3/29/2023 3:18 PM, Joe wrote:
Anyone have any ideas on how these FT-X QSO's can be in a all mode
contest, and play nice and not take over?
A sub-committee of the Contest Advisory Committee has been studying this
for several years, considering several possible changes to rules for VHF
and UHF contests, and new rules are posted here. They're all serious VHF
contesters, including guys like K2DRH.
https://contests.arrl.org/ContestRules/JanJunSep-VHF-Rules.pdf
The sub-committee is still at work, studying how changes affect
activity, still considering additional changes.
It's important to understand VHF/UHF activity east of the Mississippi is
FAR greater and very different from that west of that, and even more
different from activity west of Denver. Your observations about the
efficiency of CW and SSB in the eastern half of the country is quite
true. That's due to differences population density -- from near San
Francisco, I need double-hop to reach the high-density (and higher
activity) Eastern half of the country; FT8 makes that 10 dB easier than
CW, 20 dB easier than SSB. FT4 is a few dB less.
When I lived in Chicago there was activity all weekend on both modes and
stations spread out over CW and SSB parts of the bands; on a 2004 trip
to Northern California before I moved here, I'd worked everyone I could
hear in the first hour from a 3,000 ft peak. From then on, it was look
for rovers and wait for 6M openings. And the relatively few guys that
participate sit on the SSB calling frequencies. CW is gone here - I'm
primarily a CW contester, but my last 6M CW QSO was four years ago with
a VE6 in a rare grid. He wasn't on LOTW and it took me three years and
three SASE/cards to get a QSL.
I would love to have been on for the recent aurora, but one of our
atmospheric rivers with very high winds had taken down trees that left
us on backup power that couldn't run the shack. Aurora is another big
difference here -- in the '50s in WV, I worked AU as far south as TN;
and many years later from Chicago. My QTH in W6 is the same latitude as
the WV QTH, but have never heard AU here.
73, Jim K9YC
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