On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, George Fremin III wrote:
>
> One of the things about the VHF contest culture that I have never really
> understood is this need / desire to make skeds, or have some sort of
> spotting via APRS or even via telephone (still happens via telephone) or
> some other prearranged or automated means for making contacts happen.
>
> Why can't we just get on the radio and call CQ and tune the bands
> answering CQs and make contacts. This is how I have been doing it
> for years and I think the results have been pretty good. My results
> would be even better if everyone else did this too and for more of
> the contest period and in more directions - all of our scores would
> be better.
>
This can be summed up with "highly directional antennas". On HF, for
instance in SS, if I call CQ with a dipole, a good part of the target
audience is going to hear me. Even with a beam, if I'm pointed toward
the southwest, a large part of the country will hear me.
VHF+ beams/dishes have such so narrow patterns that it doesn't work this
way. Unless they're both running lots of power, both stations have to be
pointed toward each other to make a QSO. With my favorite entry class,
Single-Op Portable (QRP), I cannot run high power, so I count on the other
guy to point his beam my way once in a while (which didn't happen very
often last weekend). Either that, or we make a sked before the contest. I
missed my not-too-distant neighbor N2BJ completely this last weekend
because we never happened to point our beams at each other at the right
time. On the other hand, K2DRH pointed my way regularly and we had QSO's.
A lot of ops call CQ, swing the beam a few degrees and call CQ again,
swing the beam again ... and a lot of ops don't do this. They just sit
and call CQ in one direction. Guess who gets the highest scores?
73, Zack W9SZ
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