[CQ-Contest] A new "DX cluster" experience for contesters

[Alfred Frugoli]

There seems to be this general sense that if you've got a list of stations
that have been spotted (skimmed), you just click and hit the fkey that sends
your call and you're done.

Even if I narrow spots to only show me things spotted from within the USA
"1" call area, I can only hearhalf of those stations from my pee-shooter
station. And half the ones I can hear, I have no chance of breaking the
packet induced pileup from my pee-shooter station.

I feel that the set of skills is different, not non-existent.  You still
need to understand propagation, how to best use your station during
different propagation conditions, you need to decide which pile ups to
fight, and which ones to walk away from.

Yes, it changes things.  However, looking at how is Amateur Radio contesting
relevant in today's world, I think this melding with technology and the
internet is not necessarily a bad thing.  With so much information being
thrown at us every day, knowing which information is valid to each of us
personally is a VERY important skill.

73 de Al, KE1FO

K3 #3055
K3 #4094
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Check out my Amateur Radio Contesting blog at ke1fo.wordpress.com.


On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 5:22 AM, Christian Schneider <
prickler.schneider at t-online.de> wrote:

> AB7E wrote:
> >Almost all the major contests have non-assisted categories where any sort
> of spotting network assistance is not allowed
>
> I didn´t do a complete overview but at least more or less major contests
> like RDXC, WAG, All Asian, Oceania DX or WAEDC do not have unassisted
> categories and stand for an international trend against them - where
> sailors
> now have to compete against powerboats in the same category. It changes in
> this analogy from "sailing" to "single boat race" substituting the skill
> sailing with the skill of controlling the engine. So will it be with
> skimmer
> replacing the fundamental contest-skill of quickly finding unworked
> stations
> with the skill of optimal configuring the filter-software and optimizing
> the
> scheme of clicking the fish in the barrell. So the focus of the contest
> shifts one very fundmental step further away from a skill-comparison to an
> engineers comparison. Some will loose fascination with this and some may
> gain fascination. Btw it will be interesting to see how the unassisted
> categories can stand aginst the overwhelming convenience of readily avaible
> skimmer-spots on most screens. How should log-checkers decide which qso is
> a
> skimmer-generated qso? With the myriads of spots for every station there
> seem to be no reasonable chance for finding significant correlations
> between
> spot and qso.
>
> 73, Chris (DL8MBS)
>
> (www.dl8mbs.de)
>
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