[CQ-Contest] shorten CW SS

[Dan Robbins]

This year conditions during SS CW were a lot worse on Sunday than they
were on Saturday.  Even if you live in propagationally advantaged area
and avoided the immediate effects, many of the stations you could have
worked on Sunday were affected.  The last hour of the contest was one of
the best on Sunday for us because conditions improved somewhat towards
the end.  Earlier in the day 20 was dead and 15 was nearly so.  With
better condx there would have been more northern tier stations workable
on more bands Sunday.

 Another thing if all the big CQers would cease CQing when their rate
dropped low, then maybe some of the little guys would have a place to
call CQ and provide some fresh meat.  Of course, with SO2R, there's
never a reason to stop CQing...or so some believe.

In short, I don't favor changing the time.


KL7Y




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>From Leigh S. Jones" <kr6x at kr6x.com  Thu Nov  9 05:11:48 2000
From: Leigh S. Jones" <kr6x at kr6x.com (Leigh S. Jones)
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 21:11:48 -0800
Subject: [CQ-Contest] W5/W6/W0 guys
Message-ID: <095f01c04a0b$903e46b0$ede3c23f at kr6x.org>


KU8E wrote:

>  Sorry... but I don't buy this. Just because you go to KP2/KP4
>  doesn't automatically mean you are going to win. I really think
>  the guys in W6 , Texas, Colorado have a much better chance of winning
>  then someone down south. Just think about it... how many of you have
>  your beams pointed south during SS weekend ??? I would say most have
>  them west... right at those W5/W6/W0 guys. Plus, when you are down
>  south it's a 3 band contest - 20/15/10.... if they go bad your chances
>  go down the drain.

Please don't lump W6 in with W5/W7/W0.

If you don't understand why I say this, try the following:  Find a good map
of the population distribution of the US, and locate the heavily populated
areas.  If you'd rather not do the footwork, take my word for it.  The maps
always seem to show that nearly a half of the population of the US is
located between Washington D.C. and Boston and lives right on the Atlantic
Ocean.  The truth is that this is only about a third of the US population,
but one of the two remaining thirds lives within 300-400 miles of the main
concentration.  The concentration is known as the Eastern Seaboard.

Draw a circular arc around the Eastern Seaboard about 2500 miles in
diameter.  This is the far limit of single hop F2 layer propagation from the
Eastern Seaboard under typical conditions.  Draw a similar circular arc,
this time make it, say, 1700 miles.  This is frequently the near limit of
single hop F2 layer propagation on bands near the MUF.  You will find the
advantaged areas for the SS contest within the zone between the arcs.

There was once a time when the W6 area was similarly advantaged, and my own
SS efforts during the decade of the 1970's could be listed as evidence of
the W6 advantage.  There has been a change in the demographics of the
country since that time -- a great exodus of our neighbors in the heartland
of America has taken place.  Detroit, and the American steel industry has
steadily declined, family owned farms have been replaced with gigantic
mechanized agribusiness corporations, and extreme winters have sometimes
driven whole segments of the population from the Midwest southward.

The American Midwest, once the bread-and-butter core QSO source for
Californian contesters, has declined in numerical significance, just as the
growth of high tech industries in the Northeast, Texas, the Pacific
Northwest, and the Silicon Valley have grown.  This has meant that the
entire Pacific Coast, from San Diego to Seattle, is now just too far west to
compete.  The advantage that California has held has always been less
prominent than the Gulf Coast advantage, and has actually only been present
during declining sunspot conditions.  While sunspots decline, operators
typically hug the MUF more closely in an attempt to operate in a familiar
band change pattern that has been successful in the past.  During periods of
increasing sunspot numbers, the reverse is true, and shorter-skip contacts
take on an increasing importance in setting the pattern of advantages in the
contest.

There are, of course, randomizing effects that occasionally spoil the
pattern of advantages that I've described above.  And, there are other
patterns that come into play, such as dramatic changes in advantage based on
lattitude that result from appearance or absence of aurora (i.e., magnetic
storms).  When Pete Grillo (then W6RTT) explained to me the demographic
shift that was coming (that was in the mid 1970's), I had a little trouble
accepting it.  I thought that California would always be a good place to do
the SS.  Ah, but I was a cocky kid then.  Pete had recently moved to
California from 9-land, and understood the economic pressure that the
Midwest was suffering through better than I did.  After winning the CW SS
once from California, he moved on to win the Phone SS from KP4, then
abandoned California altogether.  You'll find him somewhere between your two
arcs.


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