I was talking to Don, AC5D, after the contest last night, and we came to
much of the same conclusion, that many ops on .313 probably didn't realize
that there was a contest going on, they just saw the band openings on the
cluster and went for 6 meter QSOs. If someone belonged to the ARRL, so
they got QST, but didn't subscribe to CQ, or any of the VHF reflectors, it
might have been easy for them to miss the contest announcements.
I believe the CQVHF contest started in the early 90s, and at first, it was
a VHF prefix contest instead using all bands above 50mhz. You exchanged
grid squares but the multipliers were prefixes. As I was NE0P at that time
it was kind of fun having a rarer prefix. At the start, and for several
years it was the same weekend as the IARU contest, which was really
confusing. At some point, around 2000, they moved it to the following
weekend, and made it a 6 and 2 contest only. I believe that they dropped
the prefixes as multipliers and went to grid square multipliers before
that, though.
I also don't understand why we use the "signal reports" instead of grid
squares for VHF QSOs on FT8 either, as everyone uses grid squares on all
other modes, except for some DXpeditions that just want to maximize rate
during short openings by using 599 reports.
Don and I were also talking last night about how 6 meters is becoming an HF
band. It is included on almost all HF transceivers today from the major
manufacturers (except for the Icom 718, Elecraft KX2 and Alinco DX-SR8T),
QST allows 6 meter QSOs to count for the DXCC challenge (but no QSOs above
6m count), and many big gun contesters and DXers from HF have found their
way to 6m. I will thrilled in the CQVHF contest to have AA7V and KC7V call
me when I was running 6 meter CW!
73 John AF5CC
On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 10:49 AM, Keith Morehouse <w9rm@calmesapartners.com>
wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 8:56 AM, Douglas Dever <dougdever@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Most people on 313 probably didn't even realize there was a contest, they
> > just saw a bunch of spots and assumed the band was open. CQ WW VHF
> doesn't
> > have the sort of awareness that the ARRL contests do, in my opinion.
> >
> > -doug
>
>
>
> ^^^ THIS, I believe, is a big part of this weekends problem. The only
> reason I can think this is the case is that 6M is overrun (yes, a strong
> word, but it's kind of true) by HF-centric op's who swoop in on the band
> for the prime 6 weeks and have no clue about normality, traditions, or
> whatever. Add a bunch of new-to-the-band op's, only brought in by the
> existence of FT8 and you have a large pot of op's who may not know CQWW VHF
> exists, even though it is, arguably, the (one of the..) premier VHF contest
> and has been running for decades, more or less on the same weekend.
>
> To continue, the perceived PROBLEM with contest mode is not a problem with
> contest mode, at all. It's a operating and training problem, compounded by
> certain euro-centric software that doesn't even include contest mode (JTDX
> - I'm looking in your direction...). HOW this program could have come to
> be, as a open-source fork of WSJT-X WITHOUT the inclusion of such an
> important feature as contest mode is staggering. The entire BASIS of WSJT
> is with the VHF-UHF weak signal community - a community of grid chasers,
> grid collectors and grid SENDERS. Sending grids should not be a "MODE", it
> should be normal procedure on 6M and above.
>
> The other day, there was a big 6M op from EU on one of the chat pages,
> advocating NOT using contest mode, because, he said, the European ops
> didn't want to be bothered with grids during a big opening. This is
> ludicrous - anyone who has been around for a while, who used to work 6M DX
> on SSB or CW, knows that your typical EU op would have had a fit if you
> didn't give him your grid.
>
> My suggestion is simple - just get rid of the 'funny little numbers' and
> send grids ALL THE TIME. The funny numbers are meaningless, useless and
> highly variable - they tell us nothing except who's signal quality is
> perceived by a computer program to be "better" in some slice of a 15 second
> transmission. VHF-UHF ops have ALWAYS sent grids - it's what we want and
> what we need. Don't let a bunch of HF-centric guys co-opt the original
> purpose of WSJT. Suggest the addition of a "HF MODE" instead. Let them
> deal with the funny numbers.
>
> -W9RM
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