> [Original Message]
> From: Ron Notarius W3WN <wn3vaw@verizon.net>
>
>
> The last few major contests have seen minimal (if any) operation from me,
> primarily due to family and other obligations. When I was QRV, I took
> advantage of having the on-line cluster at hand to look for "rare" spots.
> But you know what? I don't think it helped me at all. For one thing,
> knowing how often busted calls get posted, I had a tendency to listen to
the
> other station(s) longer (before & sometimes after the QSO) to verify I had
> my information right. For another, especially on some of the "rarer" DX,
I
> quickly found myself immensed in a huge pileup; a few times I found
similar
> "rarer" DX prior to the spot, worked 'em quickly, and then would see the
> pileup descend after the spot was made. And very often, the spot was
being
> made by someone with a directional and/or gain antenna, and I was wasting
> time listening for someone who (to me) wasn't there, or barely there, or
> there no longer.
>
Ron,
All you've told us is that you haven't yet figured out how to properly use
assistance to optimize your score.
But put two skilled and determined operators into two nearby equivalently
equipped stations. Station 1 goes solo, just "a boy and his radio".
Station 2 gets packet so we have "a boy and his radio and a bunch of other
guys and their radios". Station 2 will win. (The recent traffic about a
"melded top 20" is statistically invalid because it ignores the fact that
the really hard-core single ops by-and-large shun hunting deer in a fenced
game farm, so good operators are under-represented in the "assisted"
category.)
Just for grins, I ran "assisted" in SS Phone this fall. It wasn't as much
fun (never again --- I felt like I was cheating), but I certainly got a lot
of Q's that I'd otherwise never have stumbled on, especially Sunday
afternoon.
>From the French:
--
Un chasseur sachant chasser chasse sans son chien.
(A hunter who knows how to hunt hunts without his dog)
--
73, de Hans, K0HB
--
><{{{{*> http://www.home.earthlink.net/~k0hb
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