[CQ-Contest] {CQ-Contest] CQ WW DX SSB Midwest vs East Coast

[Mike Smith VE9AA]

He's only 618miles SE of you and as the crow flies to EU (great circle path)
he might only have you by 100-200 miles (roughly)
to the Center of EU (and there's more to CQWW than just EU) so it's probably
just that he's the better/quicker op.  Nothing more.

I don't think there is very much of any of this "East Coast/Midwest" stuff
going on here at all.

Seconds or parts of seconds added up over the entire period of the contest
really add up.
If he calls every mult only once or twice and you call every two or three
times that's really all the difference there
needs to be.
===================================
I have an informal Competition with a ham who lives on the East Coast 
(Richmond, VA).   I live in the Midwest (Chicago Northern Suburbs).  In last

weeks CQ WW DX SSB contest, he outdid me with many more multipliers.  He had
63 
more multipliers on 15M and 92 more multipliers on 10M.  What is interesting

and frustrating is that we were both doing S&P (no running at all).  I was 
operating assisted using the cluster spotting in N1MM and I was very heavily

focused on multipliers.  He, on the other hand was listening up and down the

bands, snagging contacts.

So, what I'm trying to figure out is how he ended up with so many more 
multipliers.  Is this the difference between East coast and the Midwest 
propagation?  Or is it my approach?  Could it be that I missed so many 
multipliers because they never showed up as spots?  I would have thought
that 
almost everyone that was running would likely get spotted but perhaps that
was 
a really bad assumption.

Overall, we are both little pistols.  His station my have a slight edge as
his 
beam is at 40 feet vs my 35 feet but that is about it.

So, two questions.  

If one is running assisted what balance of clicking multiplier spots vs.
tuning 
up and down the dial tends to be most productive in snagging multipliers?

Second, how much of a difference is there between working a world wide
contest 
from the Midwest vs. the East coast?

Any insights would be appreciated.

73,
Ray Mikula  (W9NZ)

Sent from Mail for Windows

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Mike, Coreen & Corey
Keswick Ridge, NB