[CQ-Contest] ARRL DX - Self Spotting

[Ed Felter]

I have been contesting about 5-6 years and have always CHOSEN to be low
power and unassisted.  I CHOSE not to self spot this past weekend, thinking
that (for me) that would be an assistance.  Bob KQ2M seems to have proven
TO ME that self spotting would put me (in my own mind) in the Assisted
class. I will continue to operate in the Unassisted category with no self
spots.  MY CHOICE!

I have no axe to grind, no reputation to maintain, no experience to be of
value.

I do wish we could still have a pure Unassisted class.

No arguments here!

73 and see you on top band Friday night!

Ed AI6O


On Wed, Mar 8, 2023 at 6:25 PM Barry W2UP <w2up.co at gmail.com> wrote:

> Rule for consideration for next year:
>
> You can work yourself for QSO points once every 10 minutes.
>
> Barry W2UP
>
> On Wed, Mar 8, 2023 at 5:18 PM <kq2m at kq2m.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > 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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