[CQ-Contest] CQ-Contest Digest, Vol 179, Issue 21

[Eric Gruff]

I empathize with you, Bill. I am very familiar with the situation you have,
because in many VHF contests, 6 Meters is wide open from the Rockies or
Mississippi River and east, but completely dead on the West Coast. After a
few hours of trying to work all of the five or ten San Diego locals, I go
find something else to do. Then I read the soapbox, where stations along the
East Coast complain that they only worked 20 or 30 grid squares due to poor
propagation.

One thing that I wonder - why does SS start so late on Saturday? It's 2 PM
Pacific and 5 PM Eastern, which leads to a Sunday eve/night finish for most
folks. If it started 3 or 4 hours earlier, not only would it be more "prime
time" both days, but we'd all probably enjoy the extra three hours of
propagation on 20 M (and maybe 15) at the start. This seems like an easy,
non-controversial change that will make the final few hours of the contest
more user-friendly for almost everyone.

NC6K

Message: 4
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2017 13:24:00 -0500
From: cqtestk4xs at aol.com
To: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQ-Contest Digest, Vol 179, Issue 14
Message-ID: <15f9cdfe552-c0a-2c14 at webjas-vae099.srv.aolmail.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Last two hours a bonus round?   Gee, that's nice since 20 is closed out in
KH6 and 40 isn't open yet.  


Better idea is to make it a 24 hour contest and you get to work all 24....no
time off.


Bill K4XS/KH7XS



-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Gruff <egruff at cox.net>
To: cq-contest <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Wed, Nov 8, 2017 11:23 am
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQ-Contest Digest, Vol 179, Issue 14

Tor - I think we do need the time restrictions, because the idea is to
"force" everyone to stick around until at least partway through Sunday
afternoon to get a higher score. 

I'm way down in the lower left corner of the US, with a decent, but not
exceptional station, and I could easily have worked many stations on two
bands within a few minutes on Saturday (80/40 or 40/20 or 20/15) by just
moving them to the 2nd band. That happens a lot in other contests where you
can work everyone once on each band, and IMO isn't a good idea here as it
really changes the makeup of SS. 

I also still like the idea of making the last few hours a bonus round. Maybe
for new mults only, or some other permutation that really incentivizes folks
to operate late in the contest. 

Glad to see other folks proposing many of the same ideas here. Maybe ARRL
will consider some of them.