Brooke,
Interesting question, and one that I have often considered. I've operated
ARRL CW from P40Y and P49Y the last three years. I've used a second radio,
but not to look for mults; rather, to check for band openings and as a
convenience in moving mults. As a practical matter, from the Caribbean,
it's unlikely that you will work a rare mult by finding it on the second
radio. The rare mults generally will call you, and then you may want to
move them to other bands. Mostly the guys who are CQing from US/VE are the
big stations, and they will all call you when you are spotted on packet
anyway. The rarer mults are mostly low power "little pistol" stations that
are searching and pouncing themselves.
For example, last year I worked 59 of the possible 63 mults on 40-10. I
did actually spend some time looking for the other four, all of which were
Canadian, on the off chance that someone like VY1JA might have been CQing.
But I never heard one of them, and don't believe that those four ever showed
up in the contest.
I'll be interested to see responses from other Caribbean ops.
73, andy, ae6y
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brooke Allen" <brooke.t.allen@gmail.com>
To: <CQ-Contest@CONTESTING.COM>
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 6:14 AM
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Advice for SO2R from Caribbean during ARRL
> Over the last decade I've fallen in love with SO2R low power when
> operating
> from the U. S. At low power the rates are low enough that there is time to
> do something with the 2nd radio.
>
>
>
> I've operated from the DX side and love it because it makes me feel like I
> am popular. (I'd rather look like Brad Pitt and have hundreds of women
> lusting after me, but a pileup on 15 ain't bad).
>
>
>
> But I never have operated SO2R from the DX side in a contest.
>
>
>
> Is it worth doing? I'll be operating the ARRL CW low power from a beach
> house in Puerto Rico with wire verticals at water's edge. My analysis is:
>
>
>
> - The only place where I have to worry about multipliers is 10 and
> 160. On the other bands mults will just happen.
>
> - I'm going to be battling it out with Europe much of the time, so
> much of the time I'll be fighting to keep a freq.
>
>
>
> Right now I think a 2nd radio might make sense mostly on 10 during the day
> and 160 at night. However my fear is that whenever I pay attention to the
> 2
> nd radio I greatly increase the risk of losing my run frequency. If I were
> running a KW from ZD8 I might be able to keep my freq but barefoot from
> KP4
> I run a big risk that 20 seconds of silence means someone else owns my
> spot.
> I also find that, at least in the CQWW, 2 radios leads me into temptation
> in
> that I often find myself S&P with both radios, sort of DXing. I might be
> having a blast, but my score suffers. I don't think I should be afraid of
> this in ARRL because there is nothing to work that is actually
> interesting.
>
>
>
> Does anyone else have experience with this from DX in ARRL?
>
>
>
> Should I bother trying to man 2 radios?
>
>
>
> During sunspot minimum should I be trying to run on 15 and announce a
> listening freq on 10?
>
>
>
> What am I not thinking of?
>
>
>
> 73,
>
>
>
> Brooke N2BA
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>
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