Just an observation (over many years) .....
In my opinion, the Sprint sponsors do a very poor job of promoting and
advertising the Sprints. I think a little more effort into the advertising
would go a long way towards increasing the actvity.
The 4hr operating time is perfect. Don't have to commit an entire day,
weekend, etc. to sitting in front of the radio.
-Scott AA5AM
On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 9:06 AM Ed Kucharski <k3dne@comcast.net> wrote:
> 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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