[CQ-Contest] Re: [PVRC] Re: [PVRC] spotting

[AA4NC at aol.com]

I have "no dog in the hunt" as far as the packet vs. no packet debate in this contest, but I do believe an interesting occurence has happened with the N2RM claimed win using no packet.

First off, I join others in applauding the N2RM effort. These guys won against the "conventional wisdom" odds. They used the strengths of their station (ample number/quality of ops and same band receive ability) to beat the packet system. 

The other major advantage that they had was very visible to us on the DX end of this contest. While most all the big gun multis sat in the huge packet generated pileups, N2RM worked us when we were begging for QSOs. Multiply this by 600 plus multipliers and there's the margin of victory. Those packet induced pileups can really slow you down. I also didn't hear N2RM trying to work "8P6JA" (our call was busted several times on packet spots) as a lot of the other big multis did.  This shows me that a lot of the stations are too dependent on packet and they are blindly shooting spots.

I doubt that my normally undermanned M/S operations will be able to turn off the packet any time soon, but I hope to learn from N2RM. We should not rely solely on packet for multipliers, and we should actually look at the spots before pushing the packet shoot button...

73,

Will
AA4NC / W4MR
8P9JA in ARRL DX