[UK-CONTEST] Contests

[paul at greenrover.demon.co.uk]

G3SJJ wrote:
> Dave, with respect, it is you who is missing the point.
> 
> Competition, competitiveness, contests ... all occur in everyday life. 
> The whole idea is that there will be a winner, people at the top, people 
> in the middle, people lower down. Radio contesting is the same, as is AFS.

I wonder if the SSB event will create so much traffic :-)


As a young fell runner, I never once thought about slowing down so as 
not to upset the also-rans - in those days FB! meant something 
completely different. What I actually felt was a degree of smug self 
satisfaction, knowing that all those hundreds of miles flogging round 
the streets of Bolton in the pouring rain were actually paying off on 
the day of the race!

This year after AFS I gave the dog an extra pat and told him how good 
morse runner was.

But I'm not sure any of these race / speed analogies are particularly 
good. In this competition everyone depends on other people taking part 
to make it worth while. I can't imagine that AFS would be particularly 
enjoyable if only three teams took part. I know in my case there is a 
bit of adrenalin created by the frantic nature of the activity.

At a guess, most of the top team members in this AFS event will have 
worked maybe 250+ QSO's? lets say 60 odd qso's an hour would be a 
creditable score? (I think last year only 13 people had scores of more 
than 2500)

So whilst leathering along at 35-40wpm will get the bulk of the qso's 
done its hardly a drain on your time to slow down for periods to work 
the rest of us.

In terms of whether to work 30 fast Europeans or 10 slower G's, not GW's 
of course :-) is it not possible in AFS to manage all 40?

I would have thought that on average the rates for all the top stns is 
high in the first couple of hours and a sprint toward the finish, even a 
dork like me spent a fair bit of time in the middle with unanswered cq's.

I don't feel geographically challenged here in GW although its fair to 
say the winners in this test will have propagation to eu quite a while 
before us - but what about GM entrants, without plenty inter-G activity 
I suspect their contest would only be a couple of hours long?



-- 
73 de Paul GW8IZR IO73TI
http://www.gw8izr.com