[UK-CONTEST] Jubilee - Thoughts.

[Chris Tran GM3WOJ]

Hi Tim et al

I'd like to pick up one of your points, concerning inter-UK
working.  There was some debate about this on this
reflector a while ago.  I am one of those who think it's
a bad idea Tim, mainly for reasons of propagation.

On LF, with the exception of the extremities of the
country, everyone in the UK should be able to work
each other fairly easily - how many stations ?- your
guess is as good as mine but I would think 200-300
approx. for a contest like the Jubilee.  Trying to get
QSOs on 80m from the UK in e.g. CQ WW results in
a very low QSO rate.

On HF, inter-UK working would (a) disadvantage the
smaller stations who cannot generate sufficient
backscatter to be easily heard by other UK stations
(reduced backscatter is noticeable now as the 
sunspot cycle has dropped a bit) (b) disadvantage
the bigger stations who would struggle to work other
UK stations, or would be criticised if they opted to
just ignore the '1-point' weak UK callers and work
easier QSOs worth more points.

I think part of the reasoning is also to make the UK
a 'focus' for international activity, rather than a parochial
contest like AFS.

I don't really think an M3 would be put off contesting if
the station called takes a few seconds to simply explain 
that the rules of this particular contest do not allow 
inter-UK working.

IOTA note - don't use NA version 10.56 - you can't enter 
3-digit IOTA references !

73
Chris   GM3WOJ    
www.gm7v.com