I have "no dog in the hunt" as far as the packet vs. no packet debate in this
contest, but I do believe an interesting occurence has happened with the N2RM
claimed win using no packet.
First off, I join others in applauding the N2RM effort. These guys won against
the "conventional wisdom" odds. They used the strengths of their station (ample
number/quality of ops and same band receive ability) to beat the packet system.
The other major advantage that they had was very visible to us on the DX end of
this contest. While most all the big gun multis sat in the huge packet
generated pileups, N2RM worked us when we were begging for QSOs. Multiply this
by 600 plus multipliers and there's the margin of victory. Those packet induced
pileups can really slow you down. I also didn't hear N2RM trying to work
"8P6JA" (our call was busted several times on packet spots) as a lot of the
other big multis did. This shows me that a lot of the stations are too
dependent on packet and they are blindly shooting spots.
I doubt that my normally undermanned M/S operations will be able to turn off
the packet any time soon, but I hope to learn from N2RM. We should not rely
solely on packet for multipliers, and we should actually look at the spots
before pushing the packet shoot button...
73,
Will
AA4NC / W4MR
8P9JA in ARRL DX
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