[UK-CONTEST] Eu Sprint - Apology

[Dave Lawley]

This is an apology to any uk-contest reflectorites who I may have 
tempted to have a go in the Eu CW Sprint today.

A few years ago we started getting QRM in the last two hours of the 
contest from the Russian WSEM contest. An approach to the Russians 
proved fruitless, so we decided for last year's contest to swap the 
spring phone and CW weekends. At the same time we moved the start time 
one hour later, to reduce the disadvantage suffered by those of us in 
western Europe. Before, when the contest finished we were still in 
daylight and this made 80m QSOs especially hard.

Well, guess what? The Russians have gone and moved their damned WSEM 
contest a week early - it started an hour into the CW sprint today, and 
has totally trashed it. Complete waste of time.

The North American sprints have a great level of activity and very high 
skill levels, with the leaders making up to 400 QSOs in the four-hour 
contest period. We're told that contesting is on the increase in Europe 
but we have never been able to achieve comparable levels of activity in 
the Eu sprint and I'm forced to the conclusion that, with some 
exceptions of course, Eu contesters cannot achieve the skill levels 
needed for sprint contesting, they seem to prefer just pushing F1 all 
day and if the cluster can find your mults for you, so much the better.

Even though we don't get the same levels of activity in the Eu sprints 
that they get in North America, I usually enjoy the sprint but WSEM has 
completely ruined it this time.

Dave G4BUO