[CQ-Contest] Attn: Europe

troesne at gwdg.de troesne at gwdg.de
Tue Aug 11 18:52:43 EDT 1998


At 15:45 10.08.1998 -0400, you wrote:
>
>
>Why is there such poor activity from some parts of Europe in the WAE 
>contest?  I noted very little activity from Italy, UK, and Scandinavia.  
>
>Just curious.  This contest used to be more popular... did it not?
>

Hello Bill et al., 
most of the people here say "WAE you love it or you hate it, nothing in
between",
just because of
this QTC traffic. And it looks that more and more EU's starting to hate it,
specially during the sun-spot minimum.

The problem is (specially for "us" small pistols, 100 Watts and Verticals 
under poor conDX) the second day is mostly used for giving QTCs to mostly
big-guns (sometimes contacted for the real QSO on saturday before). 
In the CQWW all the small ones get their chance to work the "rare"
DXpeditions on Sunday. But specially this year at many many many times
I found a "rare" station while (one of the) short band openings (for the
big guns these openings could be "longer" usable I think...)
giving QTCs (needing time for at least 5-6 real QSOs)
when finishing 1-2 stronger stations called and came through and the 3rd QSO
(which could be my chance..hi) was again with QTCs. 
So many weaker EUs lost the opening and switched off their rig or even
stopped to look and to work in 
the next WAE.

Remember, most of the contest-QSOs you will do with "no-participating"-
"2-3 hours actice"-"Point-Givers", stations who look for new ones (bandpoints,
prefixes, or otherwise "specials" etc.), they make maybe max 100 QSOs each
test. Or just want to make just a few contacts.
With the style of the WAE many of them lost "fun" while listening
to one QTC after another, For a 10 QSO QTC-Series a contest stations could
work maybe 5 others, and (sometimes) this 5 are really listening this procedure
(maybe maximum 2 times, but than OFFed the TRX..hi)

OK, the QSO-rate on sunday goes down, but this effect is mostly/partly
because of this "small-scale-pointgivers/"special"-hunters. Be sure many
stations (weaker/small guns/time-resticted-pointgivers) are "a bit"
disappointed.
They will probably will not look into the WAE next year, or while the WAE CW
last weekend.

Think the problem with the less activity will be better under more sunspots,
with
longer and more constant band openings (useable also for small pistols), but ?
(I hope)

As I wrote before, my contesting friends told me "you love it or hate it":
I hate it, but some lot love it, maybe not much enough ? hi

See and wait and hope for the spots, 2-3 years ? hi



>For that matter, most of western Europe was poorly represented except for 
>the DL's.  

OK, the WAE is from the german DARC, and in DL we have a lot of HAMs..hi

Tom,
DL8AAM / 5Z4GD
RRDXA 

PS: QTCs given really lot of fun, give an OP a bigger challenge as
only 59 14, more practise, but...


>73
>
>Bill, W4AN
>
>
>--
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>
>
>



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