Appreciate your post since it consolidated a few items which I'd held
off commenting on.
I am of the opinion that Call, Bands, and Operating mode(s) should be an
allowed practice over APRS for all contest categories. APRS is radio
which conforms to the narrative of dissenting against "non-Amateur
Radio" resources. Don't advocate posting of specific frequencies.
We're all grouped together in the low end of the band anyway, so S&P
would be effective when pointed in the right direction.
If I'm headed to a local hilltop or mountain, I don't see why there
should be a problem with "spotting" myself on APRS before leaving the
house. Again, no frequencies; just telling the world where to point
their antennas.
IMHO, instead of scattered information over multiple web sites and
databases, APRS makes for a great centralized resource which is still
radio. Coming up with an agreeable format for the message beacon would
be a trivial matter.
For the contest managers on the reflector, would it be possible to get a
off the record ruling on such a scheme? What flaws or concerns would
you have with such an option?
73,
Joe N2TEE
On 9/18/2013 2:49 AM, Marshall-K5QE wrote:
Hello to all interested in VHF Contesting.....
The topic of "assistance" has come up several times on various
reflectors in the past year or so. Let's see what we have now:
THE CQ WW VHF CONTEST
CQ has defined three kinds of assistance:
A)Passive Assistance--Passive Assistance means that a station
is allowed to look at the Internet resources. ALL stations are
allowed to use Passive Assistance
B)Active Assistance--Active Assistance means that you can post
to the various Internet reflectors. This is allowed for ALL stations
that are calling CQ using digital meteor scatter or digital EME.
Stations using this form of assistance can post their
Call, Frequency, and Sequence ONLY. No other posting is allowed.
C)Interactive assistance--Interactive Assistance is using
Internet resources to schedule contacts during the contest. This form
is NOT ALLOWED to any stations.
DISCUSSION OF THE CQ RULES:
The new CQ rules have removed the discrimination against the Single
Operator stations. It never made any sense to me at all that Multi
Operator stations were free to look at the Internet resources, but
Single Operator stations were not. When I made a post concerning this
discrimination, the ARRL apologists went into apoplexy. One actually
told me that, "Single Ops should not be able to do that stuff!" I was
astounded. Where do these ideas come from??
The CQ WW VHF contest is far and away the best VHF contest that we
have. The new rules for Active Assistance allow digital MS and
digital EME stations to "tell the world" where they are calling CQ.
This means that a lot more digital QSOs occur. It really makes it a
lot more fun and a lot more "rare" grids make it into the log. The CQ
rules do not allow SSB/CW stations to post themselves, so that is like
the ARRL rules for HF and VHF contesting.
THE ARRL VHF CONTESTS
For this discussion, I want to ignore the EME contest. The rules
there are so screwy that they defy reason--and the history of the
rules changes there is a very sordid affair. So, excepting the EME
contest, the ARRL contests do not permit any form of assistance. When
this topic came up in the past, there were a substantial number of
folks that did NOT want any new classes in the contest. NO NEW
CLASSES was their cry. At first, I did not agree with this point of
view, but later I came to see that adding an Assisted Class to VHF
contesting was probably the wrong way to go. It would further
fragment the entries that we do have.
DISCUSSION OF THE ARRL RULES:
In HF contesting, the appears to be a never ending supply of stations
to work. You can point your beam just about anywhere and there will
be stations to contact. This is NOT true in VHF contesting. In my
area, for instance, there are only a relatively small number of
stations that can be worked--even with a very big station. Because of
the "search light" nature of VHF beams, it is quite possible to miss
stations that you could otherwise work, just because the two of you
never got your beams pointed at each other at the same time. So
contacts that you SHOULD have made, were NOT made. I don't know about
you, but I want to make EVERY contact that it is possible for me to
work. The ARRL rules seem to be constructed to minimize the number of
contacts that you can make, rather than maximizing them. The Single
Op stations are at a particular disadvantage, because of the
discriminatory rules directed at them.
The Internet is a fact of everyday life....it is a fact of Amateur
Radio and Amateur Radio contesting and it is not going away. The HF
contesters started the ball rolling with their Packet Spotting
networks. There was much howling and gnashing of teeth when that
happened. Finally, the HF world was forced to create Assisted Classes
for their contests. Now, we have packet spotting networks, APRS maps,
QSO spotting maps by band and by region, reflectors for meteor
scatter, EME and who knows what else. These resources don't make any
QSOs....you have to actually work the other station yourself, but they
to help you locate stations that you might be able to work.
Unfortunately, there are still folks that strongly oppose using such
"non-Amateur Radio" resources.
So, we do not have any Assisted Classes in the ARRL VHF contests and
many do not want any new classes. We can clean up most of the
problems without adding any new classes if we adopt rules identical to
the CQ WW VHF contest rules(or substantially similar rules). Some
will ask, "Well, why did the VUAC not accomplish this?" The VUAC
began with several successes--the new rover rules, the family station
rule, and other useful changes. Then the EME rules debacle occurred.
After that, the VUAC became a group that seemed to exist only to
protect the status quo. Nothing useful got done.
Can we do anything to make the situation better?? YES, we can.
However, the only way open to us now is to go through the Directors.
Each VHFer needs to send a letter to his/her Director(often) to let
them know that the VHF contesting rules need work. In that letter,
you can outline the CQ rules and ask that we move in that direction.
Emphasize that the rules for HF contesting are not a good fit for what
we do and that there is no reason why the VHF rules must track the HF
rules. Have face to face discussions with your Director on this topic
whenever you can. Keep plugging at this and progress will be made.
As usual, diatribes, flames, hate mail, etc. will go directly to the
bit bucket. They will not pass GO and will not collect $200.
Thoughtful replies are encouraged and appreciated....even if you don't
agree.
73 Marshall K5QE
ASIDE: There are various tactics, within the rules, that would
ameliorate the worst of the ARRL's silly rules. That should be a
topic for further discussion.
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