[UK-CONTEST] Grumpy Old Contesters

[Andy Cook, G4PIQ]

The Eu Sprint is great fun and now that activity is growing, there are
sufficient stations around make it a proper challenging contest (not really
so in the early days). Thanks to all the team for putting it together - we
all know how much hard work goes into adjudication.

My effort this time around in the CW leg was frustrated by a small furry
animal. One minute before the off the PC locked up and wouldn't restart even
after a reboot. On taking the PC apart I found loads of mouse poo & pee all
over the motherboard (we have had a small mouse problem in the shack at
work!). Didn't have my laptop with me and after a while trying to clean up
the board and see if that allowed it to restart decided that I needed to
take the hard drive out of that computer, put it in another and get started.
Lost 45 minutes through that!

I did wonder where Dave had gone!

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com]On Behalf Of Dave Lawley
Sent: 10 October 2004 11:28
To: UK Contest Reflector
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] Grumpy Old Contesters


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
_______________________________________________
UK-Contest mailing list
UK-Contest at contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/uk-contest