[UK-CONTEST] Grumpy Old Contesters

[Dave Lawley]

First we have an ill-judged posting, nothing to do with contesting, 
which looking at the time of the email may have been fuelled by rather 
too much Chardonnay.

Then we have Clive GW3NJW returning to form and seeing the glass half empty:
 >Frankly this contest is becoming a joke. Let us hope that the sponsors 
 >are listening and can take some action.

As one of the founders of the EU Sprints I object to this sort of 
throw-away comment about a contest which I and I2UIY, OK2FD, DL6RAI, 
DL2NBU and others, including a new webmaster based in the UK who has 
volunteered his services, have worked hard to promote. Just as the 
contest is getting the critical mass of participants which starts to 
make it really interesting, Clive slags it off. Thanks a bunch.

In the past I have taken note of specific rubber clocking incidents and 
these QSOs have been penalised in the checking process. It's open to 
anyone QRV at the time to note such incidents and report them, and they 
will be taken note of and if confirmed, penalised. This time due to an 
unavoidable family commitment I had to QRT at 17.37z, particualarly 
galling as I seemed to be in the lead, with the possible exception of 
DL5AXX. Therefore I was not able to observe any rubber clocking.

If you're an alligator (for whatever reason) in this contest you're not 
going to do well. You've got to be able to dig out weak CQers as well as 
hear those that call you. In the first 45 minutes of the contest a 
number of eastern Eu stations were pinning the S-meter of my Omni-D, 
quite an achievement, and I put this down primarily to propagation. 
Clive is a couple of hundred miles further west and may have been 
getting even louder signals. While I'd be the last to say there are no 
alligators among the European contesting fraternity, there is another 
factor in the sprint whereby from time to time one of these S9+ signals 
lands very close to the frequency when you're trying to copy a weak one. 
Perhaps I can hear better than many because my preferred CW rig has no 
up conversion and no synthesizer.

Has anyone got any positive comments about the Eu Sprint or are we 
wasting our time?

Dave G4BUO