After having been 'temporarily' QRT for 20 years until a year ago, I
had not kept up with these new innovations in ham radio like
DX-clusters, spotting, logging software w/ electronic keying, etc. Thus
the contesting experience now is quite different from what it used to
be in late 70's...
Until the CQWW CW contest last fall I had not taken an interest in
finding out what clusters did in conection with contesting (I had
understood it was used in 'normal' operation to make fellow hams aware
of interesting DX station activity).
Running 100W with a vertical dipole (Force12 Sigma5 - excellent stuff),
I am basically an S&P contester. However, once and a while on an open
10 meters band it is tempting to act like the 'big shots'; find a free
spot and call CQ contest.
Normally, with some hard work and patience I manage to pull in a few US
callers this way. In one of my few attempts on keeping a frequency
this way in the named CQWW CW contest, I suddenly had a massive wall of
callers - whow - what an experience. I had fun for as long as it
lasted, but it died out after a while. At the time I thought it was
purely due to good luck and a relatively strong signal over there for a
moment in time.
After the contest I started wondering what actually could have caused
this momentary rush to contact me. Aha, maybe clusters could have
something to do with it? I made a 'spot archive lookup' on the
DX-central. And right enough, there was my call listed (by W3LPL I
think it was - thanks by the way) just at the time when I had the
momentary 140 QSO's per hour run.
Enough said; but my point is that it had a tremendous effect on my QSO
rate - from some 30-40/hour in 'S&P mode' to 140/hour in 'spotted
mode'. I just can imagine how stations begging to be spotted can
enhance their score and outperform their competition by egoistic
rudeless active use of sharp elbows.
73 de
Chris
LA8OM
--- Jamie Dupree <ns3t@arrl.net> skrev: > A question for all of us,
since I have detected some rumblings about
> certain people being spotted more than others etc in the last couple
> of contests.
>
> I was doing my normal S&P during the ARRL DX SSB and was asked
> by some European DX stations if I had access to the internet -
> in order to spot them.
>
> I said no, since I actually don't have the net hooked up to my
> ham radio computer...
>
> But I felt it raised an interesting question - if that station is
> running
> unassisted - is that possibly a rules violation in that category?
> I assume I wasn't the first or the last person asked to do that.
>
> Jamie NS3T
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CQ-Contest mailing list
> CQ-Contest@contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
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