[CQ-Contest] Hey...chill out! It's a contest! It's VHF and it's just fine with me.

[Roland A. Anders]

AY-MEN to that, Ty.  And you didn't mention the outta nowhere sporadic E
openings on 6 meters (better than ten even!) plus the meteor pings that
give you one shot at the call and grid--if you are lucky!  Or the
frustration of a ping with half a callsign from new grid.  Or its
working the troposcatter barely above the noise level at 5 am after a
night of cq'ing at a 5 per hour rate.  Boring?  No way!  Challenging? 
You bet. (I love it!)  You guys take you 6 meter rigs to Dayton so I can
work you in the sprint!

73,  Rol, K3RA (6 meters at K3MQH, among other things)

tgstewart at pepco.com wrote:
> 
> Man, all this griping about contest rules/formats again...  hey, it's a contest
> and wouldnt it be boring if they were all the same or even if they were all
> "perfect"?
> 
> The VHF Sprints have their place and they are fine the way they are (except for
> the 6 meter portion which needs to be moved off of Dayton weekend).  If you dont
> like 'em, you dont have to get on and work anybody, and you can always start
> your own contest and do better :)
> 
> For those who think VHF contesting is just completely boring, I would suggest
> it's just different.  Yes, it's not the fast paced SS blast-away working 40 over
> signals.  Nope!  It's a couple of 80 over signals blasting  your front end, line
> noise to eliminate (way worse than HF), then scraping the barrel for that next
> grid that is in there one minute and faded the next.  It's waiting all weekend
> for a 1500 mile 2 meter opening that lasts 10 minutes, but jumping for joy when
> you were savvy and alert enough to catch it and take it for all it was worth.
> It's the art of passing QSO's and Mult's to other bands at it's absolute best!
> Station RF design is much more complex than on HF done at the same level...it's
> just on a smaller scale.  It's Phone, CW, HSCW, and EME!  It's tweaking the
> antenna stack 5 degrees to peak up the next QSO while straining the limits of
> your ESP to dig out a callsign that you should recognize as a regular VHFer.
> 
> Somehow it doesnt sound all that boring to me!
> 
> It's all what you make of it.  VHF is every bit as challenging as an operator
> and certainly more as a station designer than HF.
> 
> 73, Ty K3MM  (2m op at K3MQH among other things...)
> 
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