[UK-CONTEST] 4 & 6 Trophy Contests on the same day

[Ken Eastty]

I would like to go further with this idea and suggest that the 4m 
contest be held at the same time as the 6m Trophy contest.  The reasons 
for this are as follows.....


John G3UUT



As a regular 4m operator & contest entrant I don't see how this would 
work. Given the liklyhood of vastly differing propagation on the two 
bands, how would you choose which one to operate on? There's also the 
difficulty that a single operator would have working two bands 
simultaneously.
It also seems that I'm not the only one who participates in contests on 
one of these bands but not the other
(apart from a FT 817 I don't have a 6m capability in the shack or an 
antenna for that band).
Looking at the results of previous 4m & 6m Trophy contests I may not be 
alone in this, a quick look at the figures of last year's Trophy events 
shows that combined total of 82 entrants in the two events (50 - 
including 'Backpackers on 6m & 32 on 4m) only 5 callsigns appeared in 
both events. I think it unlikely that many of the 6m entrants would 
venture onto 4m given that you can't buy a box off the shelf to operate 
on 4m as you can for 6m (one of the attractions of 4m is that many 
people on the band actually know what's inside the box as they put it 
there).
Given the number of QSO's being made over the 24 hrs. of a 6m contest I 
question whether this event really needs to be this long? How many QSO's 
are made between say 2200 & 0600? Might it not make more sense to make 
this a one day event and reduce the number of sections that can be entered?

As someone who rarely works 6m it seems absurd to me to be scoring  6m 
contests in points/km resulting in scores of >200 million being amassed 
and distances of 8,000km worked when many contacts are made via E or 
occasionally F layer propagation. To me this looks more like an HF 
contest, I also think that 4m contests shouldn't be scored in points/km 
but for mostly different reasons.
It seems that stations who are lucky enough to catch a good E's opening 
might make more points than the rest of the field in just a few QSO's, 
perhaps a scoring scheme more in line with that used in the 21/28MHz 
contest would make more sense?
However with the propagation that we've enjoyed (?) on 10m over the past 
few years some might think that we should be scoring that band on points/km!

73...

Ken

G3LVP

p.s. where's the VHF reflector?