[CQ-Contest] self spotting gotcha

[jpescatore at aol.com]

Depends on how your antennas compare to your neighbors!

I've limited my spots for years to MD/PA/VA/DE/WV since I'm in MD. Just in 3 land my spotting neighbors include W3LPL and K3LR!  In comparison, most of us in 3 land have crappier antennas than our neighboring RBN nodes!

I started filtering years ago when I realized my time wasted on calling marginal spots seemed higher than any gain in rate. Seeing spots from skimmers in Maine before 20M is open to 3 land doesn't help me. Similarly, on 10m and 160m spots west of the Mississippi are rarely useful.

73 John K3TN


> K5GO says: "I think it’s a BIG mistake to filter spots to only allow spots from close by stations. I would not trust the “neighbors’ (or for that matter one only a thousand miles away) crappy antenna on his skimmer RX to hear what I hear.  Perhaps with a bigger antenna but there are lots of times I have worked  stations that are not even spotted on this continent."