I guess my concern with skeds made before the contest is that
you have done a lot of work to get a lot of information "pre-loaded."
You will already know the other station's callsign, grid square, frequency,
beam heading, and when they will be there. This greatly reduces the
amount of work one has to do during the actual contest period. It
can affect band change decisions before and after the sked, for example.
Advertise your entire sked list beforehand and you're basically spotting
yourself, just before the contest starts.
For instance, if I'm in EM10 and I hear a weak signal to the northeast
on two meters, maybe I get the callsign OK and I hear that the grid square
is EM32 or maybe EM52. I'm not sure. It may take several repeats for me
to get it. "Rogers" are a lot easier to distinguish than the difference
between 32 and 52. If I'm on a sked and I hear the other station in the
exact same circumstance, I already know his grid square, I might even already
know the exact to-the-degree beam heading to peak him up. I'm sure a lot
of people in that situation would just send rogers.
For me, it just doesn't feel right.
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Kenneth E. Harker "Vox Clamantis in Deserto" kharker@cs.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin Amateur Radio Callsign: WM5R
Department of the Computer Sciences VP, Central Texas DX & Contest Club
Taylor Hall TAY 2.124 Maintainer of Linux on Laptops
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/
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