I'm gonna have to disagree with Chet. 4 hours seems like the perfect time
period for a sprint. In fact, I ran out of time in the 2m sprint trying to work
stations at 22:59. I consider a marathon a 48 hour HF contest or the ARRL VHF
contests - not a 4 hour sprint. Perhaps, if some think 4 hours is too long,
additional sprints can be devised (mini-sprints)? A separate 1 or 2 hour event
that would be in addition to the sprints that already exist at a different time
of year - similar to the CW Ops Test (CWT) that are of a 1 hour duration or
Phone Fray a 30 minute contest on HF. IMHO FT8 is so slow I'm not sure 1 hour
would be long enough on vhf+.
73,
Ed K3DNE
EM94
> On 10/02/2020 9:24 AM Chet S < chetsubaccount@snet.net
> mailto:chetsubaccount@snet.net > wrote:
>
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> Many contests suffer the tapering off of activity after a while. Monday
> night football, super-bowls, debates, Sunday afternoon sweepstakes doldrums,
> family time, etc.
> And nowadays we are constantly pressed to add something "new and better"
> into our lives, and if we take more on, then there is less relax time for our
> other stuff.
>
> Maybe I'm old school but still highly enjoy hearing a weak signal,
> turning the beam to peak it, and trying to work it. Ahhh, that xyz station
> improvement I made this summer is working...or not...or pick a beam direction
> and go fishing to see what you can catch. Make your own decisions when and
> whether to call toward a population density direction or toward missing
> grids. SSB vs. FT8. To me that is the name of the game. I do not like the
> idea of pre-arranged contacts or arranging them in real time, that seems more
> like DXing than Contesting and not very satisfying.
>
> The sprints are a good fun break from the workday, but are 4 hours a bit
> much? It's supposed to be a sprint not a marathon, so maybe with shorter
> hours the station activity would be more consistent throughout.
>
> 73,
> Chet, N8RA
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: VHFcontesting <
> vhfcontesting-bounces+chetsubaccount=snet.net@contesting.com
> mailto:vhfcontesting-bounces+chetsubaccount=snet.net@contesting.com > On
> Behalf Of David Olean
> Sent: Thursday, October 1, 2020 5:01 PM
> To: (Radio) VHF Contesting < VHFcontesting@contesting.com
> mailto:VHFcontesting@contesting.com >; 222 MHz ACTIVITY <
> 222Activity@Groups.io mailto:222Activity@Groups.io >
> Subject: [VHFcontesting] An idea for the sprints.
>
> It isn't much of an idea, more a suggestion, to not abandon the VHF
> sprints when activity dies down after the initial spurt of activity. I was
> not a big fan of opening up chat pages for coordination of contacts in VHF
> contests. My reasoning was that it favored stations that had good internet
> connectivity and penalized those that did not.
>
> That being said, we now have the ability to set up schedules for almost
> impossible contacts simply by coordinating on internet sites dedicated to
> such things. So why did everyone bail out after an hour or so on the
> 222 Sprint? The few diehards left were ones that I had already contacted.
> It would have been great to try some long haul tropo contacts on CW or even
> FT4/FT8 with stations that are normally not in range. Trying and failing at a
> 400+ mile QSO with a 25 watt station or trying a meteor scatter contact is
> much more agreeable than spending an hour calling CQ and tuning around on a
> almost empty band with no takers and no results. A few posts for skeds by
> several of the diehards also went unheeded towards the latter half of the
> sprint. The last hour, when things die down is the time to experiment and see
> what your station can do even if it is outside of your comfort zone. The
> worst that can happen is that the path does not work! Then, there is the
> problem of which chat page to monitor. Having poor connectivity makes
> monitoring a number of them impossible for many operators. On a good day, I
> might be able to cover two chat pages. We should set up a standardization for
> the sprints so
> people are all looking at the same place.
>
> So next time, think twice about quitting early! Do something exciting
> instead.
>
> 73
>
> Dave K1WHS
>
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