[UK-CONTEST] CQWW CW MA0BQI

[Stewart Rolfe]

--- On Tue, 1/12/09, MM0BQI <MM0BQI at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

> I have a question for serious entrants.
> 
> Do you want to be spotted?  
> 
> Interested to hear your views.
> 

Interesting question Jim. Other than the buzz of seeing your call in red in the 'You have been spotted' box followed by a wall of noise, I've always felt it to be a bit of a pain. Trouble is everyone calls pretty much on the same frequency and unlike running a dxpedition you don't normally have the choice of going split to spread them out. On a couple of occasions this weekend when I had a pile-up 'zero beat' one station would call very slightly off and was immediately readable; was this fortuitous or a clever use of the XIT?

The impression is that being spotted on a busy band brings the rate down. I think I've decided the best way to play it when it's impossible to pull a call (or meaningful part call) out of the mess is just to sit there and wait for the calling to stop....and then just wait some more until someone jumps out with a call or at least the first part of it. That's usually enough to reply to but that bit of silence feels like a big delay though in reality it's probably only a second or two at most.

This year I was on my own doing a non serious (mainly) 20m effort. I didn't use the cluster but knew immediately when I'd been spotted. So I've just pulled my spots off DxSummit and married them to my log and it's quite revealing. Except for one spot late on Sunday when the band was dying I found no evidence that my rate suffered, and in fact seemed to improve in the wake of a spot, maintaining 3 to 4 per minute for a while which for me is good(!) 

Perhaps then it's a case of stress clouding judgement. Still don't like the bedlam but it doesn't seem to do any harm so maybe I just need to get more used to it...?

Cheers,

Stewart Rolfe, GW0ETF (GW6W)