[CQ-Contest] ARRL DX - Self Spotting

[kq2m at kq2m.com]

I self-spotted quite a bit this past weekend after vowing NOT do do so 
before the contest.  But, having been spotted so little in past 
contests, especially on SSB, I decided to test the hypothesis that I 
have had that SPOTS MATTER!  I had very mixed feelings about doing so 
since before ARRLDXCW I had NEVER self-spotted, not even outside of 
contests!

I didn't self spot at first but with the mediocre Saturday 20 meter 
conditions I decided to give it a shot
and the results were fascinating to me.  Early on, a self-spot was 
usually met with callers within 30 seconds - 1 minute, mostly multis
but some single ops as well.  Then within the next 5 - 10 minutes, at 
some point, there would be an EXPLOSION, ALL AT ONCE, at some point.
Now when I was low in the band early in the contest you could say that 
the callers were the result of people tuning and I was fresh meat so 
people would call me anyway, and that was true, but the sudden BURST 
that would occur and the magnitude of loud callers going from maybe 3 - 
5 to 50 ALL AT ONCE, was more than just people tuning across my freq.

This pattern consistently repeated itself the same way for most of the 
weekend.  Sometimes when the band was open well (not just spotlight
propagation), I might get called by 4 - 5   UA4/RK4/R4 stations right in 
a row where none had called me before.  Same thing with DL's, G's, PA's
and other high volume countries.  It was like some local packet/spotting 
network that was active, had my call on it and people responded ALL AT 
ONCE
based on their local spotting network, not DX Summit, which was the only 
network that I self-spotted on.

There is no question that continuing to self-spot for most of the 
weekend (except when the pileup got too large), kept the rate higher 
than it would
have been without doing so.  And self-spotting was ESPECIALLY effective 
when I changed run frequencies on an existing band, moved to a new band,
or was not working anyone and then with in minutes I had a good run 
going.

The only times that a self-spot did not generate callers was when I was 
either not being heard (fairly frequently apparently) thanks to 
qrm/qrn/qsb, or the band was dying. And then at the end when I was on 10 
or 15 and most of the available callers on that band had either already 
worked me or were calling cq themselves.

What it did not seem to do was to bring in any more mults than I would 
normally get.  But of course this was only one weekend - so only one 
"data point" and one data point in which cndx were exceptionally erratic 
and un predictable thanks to  ** 4 ** different M-class flares DURING 
the contest, which as far as I can remember, was the most M Class flares 
that I have ever seen in one contest weekend!

After the contest I searched for my call on DX Summit to see who spotted 
me and noticed that almost no one did besides myself.  Equally 
interesting was doing a search for calls on several different serious 
High Power Single Op ALL Band guys and noticing that they were not being 
spotted either sometimes for as many as 10 - 12 hours even though they 
were obviously loud and making thousands of qso's.  I did not expect 
this at all.  It seems like the normal spotters went on strike this 
weekend seemingly determined NOT to spot anyone.

73

Bob, KQ2M


On 2023-03-08 16:25, Edward Sawyer wrote:
> I am interested to hear the opinion of the DX side on this topic.  I
> was trying to self-spot a number of times without much success.
> I tried on DX Summit.  The spot was posted.
> I tried on DX Watch.  The spot was posted.
> I tried on DX Heat and it stated that self spotting was not allowed.
> 
> What I found was that the self spot almost never generated any
> activity - maybe a couple of callers.  But then later (sometimes 10
> mins or more later) a huge group of callers would respond to a spot.
> The spot was always generated on the EU side of the pond.
> 
> I am thinking that most people have a filter set to only see EU side
> spots.  Is that true?  If so, then there is almost zero value in self
> spotting.  In fact its counter productive if people are now spotting
> less because they think we are self spotting so what's the value in
> spotting.
> 
> Any comments on this topic welcome.
> 
> Ed  N1UR
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