On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 08:00:06PM -0500, Michael A. Urich wrote:
> Speaking of not repling back to the list. I think I sent this Rusty and
> not to the list. But if I did forgive me, its been a long week already.
>
> * * *
>
> Just how many contests are TOO many contests? IMHO, the more contests we
> have, the less significant each contest becomes to the general ham
> population. Right now there are approximately two ARRL contests per
> month.
I don't think there are too many contests, especially on VHF+. If you do not
have or do not want to be on the microwaves, there are really only three
ARRL and one CQ contest all year long that attract any sort of activity
level, and even then for much of the country, the only contest with enough
activity to be really attractive is the ARRL June VHF QSO Party.
> My suggestion a couple of years ago to the league was to combine the June
> VHF QSO party, the August UHF & 10 GHz + contests into FD and then score
> all VHF+ contacts just as they would those contests. I also suggested
> that when you entered your log(s) you could specify whether if you were
> entering as FD, VHF only, UHF only, 10 GHz+ only or a VHF+ (everything above
> 50MHz) category. My vision was to allow a club to operate FD and if a
> sub-group of the club wanted to run a VHF station, UHF station or a 10Ghz+
> station they could count that in their FD score *_OR_* submit a completely
> different log if they so choose.
I really dislike this idea.
The ARRL June VHF QSO Party is _the_ premier VHF+ competition of the year
for North America. It sees _by far_ the most operations of any VHF+
competition all year long. It is quite succesful on its own on its current
weekend. In 2003, out of 818 logs submitted, there were only 31 single
operator portable operations (fewer than 4% of all logs) and 92 rover
operations (11%). The VAST majority of ARRL June VHF QSO Party operations
are from fixed stations.
Field Day, on the other hand, is _not_ a contest. Nobody takes it seriously
as a competition. The League does not even attempt to check claimed "scores."
Using small, bad antennas nobody's checked out in a year, at low heights,
using cheap coax that's been sitting in weeds beside the yard shed for a
year, from some random elementary school soccer field that just happens to
be nearby in the neighborhood but maybe surrounded by hills, with low,
possibly intermittent power and generally poor operators (have you ever been
duped by the same station eight times in an hour? - only on Field Day!) is
bad enough on HF - it becomes really bad on VHF. Which is why few Field
Day stations bother with VHF.
> Now, let face this too folks, the Gulf Coast summers are just too hot and
> humid for so many contests where you might want to try and go put a rare
> grid on the air or operate as a rover.
Roughly 85% of the stations submitting logs in June are fixed stations. I'm
sure the percentage of stations that make QSOs but do not submit logs that
are fixed stations is much closer to 100%. The VAST majority of people
operating the contest are doing so from home, so whether or not it's hot
outside is not very important (although, I admit doing tower work with
temperatures in the 90s is no fun.)
--
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
kenharker@kenharker.com
http://www.kenharker.com/
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