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

[John Wilson]

Ken,

The list of things you are suggesting will be a problem with this idea 
are just the things that make it very attractive to me and, I suspect, a 
lot of other 4m and 6m operators.  I've been on 4m, on and off, since I 
got my licence in 1965 and enjoy the parochial feel of the band, however 
one contest becomes very much like the last and personally I also enjoy 
the DX, the amazing signal strengths, the cut and thrust and the random 
element that Es brings and now that we have many more countries on the 
band, Es is going to be the main mode that we have to communicate with them.

I think there is some advantage in a 24 hr, two day, event in that it 
gives more of a chance of getting some good propagation.  Es is very 
fickle and you can still have days, even during the peak period, when 
there is virtually none.

So all I'm suggesting is that we have one contest a year when all of 
Europe's low VHF, Es nuts can be on the same bands at the same time. 
Operating more than one band adds to the fun, but you can still operate 
one or the other as you like.  After all there are still 15 other 4m 
contest days in the calender, 14 of them outside the Es season.
73
John G3UUT

Ken Eastty wrote:
> 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?
>
>
>
>
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