[UK-CONTEST] 432MHz AFS Sunday 7th February

[Ray James]

--- On Sun, 7/2/10, Paul pasquet <g4rra at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I've got to agree that S&P is a complete waste of time if you are the edges of activity, KST at least made some sort of contact possible.
> This is the exact reason why I wont be QRV during this one.
> Actually its the very reason I took down the entire 432Mhz system! 
> Good luck to anyone in the less populated areas of the country,you will need it.

This was certainly the point I raised when the KST ban was announced. 
Though very annoyed by it and the complete lack of evidence to justify followed by the biased the survey, I opted just to support 2m/70cm events in future rather than enter. Not taking the severe route Paul has. 
It didn't require a crystal ball to realise the KST implication that low provincial support in UK VHF+ contests would reduce further or disappear completely though much is also due rules that don't inspire UK wide encouragement to participate in the first place, M2 in particular.
The Vienna meeting takes place next week with 2 KST proposals on the table. I wait with interest to see if how rest of the Region 1 reacts. 

The current saving grace for the CC is obviously the capitalisation of "club interest" in gradually getting more bums on seats. In the main I am sure this is due to one or a few enthusiastic members being a driving force behind each team and hopefully a lot of these new contestants will be improving stations (beyond collinears!) over time and continue to populate the bands outside of contests. 
I would still prefer a more general and organised RSGB CC flow of contest information to club secretaries in order to publicise contests and ways in which clubs can participate. This would reach the many clubs void of contesters within their membership.

What interests me when I read all the "great activity" soapbox comments that in usually emanate from SE England based stations is what happens if these 2.5 hours events start becoming overloaded in that quarter? We've already started to see a few handbags out regarding "stations in my passband" and "I was on the frequency at the start" appear. An ideal time IMHO to really start encouraging greater UK participation before things get out of hand including malicious jamming of competitor groups or individuals. Ditch M2 that only really favours the highly populated South East of England. Either Points Per Km only, UK Squares only, or use the RSGB Postal Code multiplier.   


I agree with Dave G3YYD, UKAC's as well as some other contests can be boring, in fact very boring, but at the same time interesting. I realise that is a complete contradiction but I feel "boring" is too generalised a statement without explanation. 
It is boring to listen to white noise interspersed with the occasional signals from 500+ Km away when they're beaming your way and you wonder why more of the 200-500Km stations aren't doing the same more often. KST certainly permitted you to get their attention and do something about it.
In parallel to that, because we could see openly what others were doing, everyone was happy to help each other with DX-Cluster spots, now it's dog eat dog between UK competitors so we've lost a camaraderie that is sorely missed.  
For those in populous activity areas, boring may simply be a case of working the same 60, 70, 80, 90 or 100+ stations month in month out with very little variation, but hey, that can be interesting to fill your boots with wall to wall contacts in a short duration of time.

The 70cm AFS Contest was a quiet affair with lots of white noise despite G0ODQ, G4ODA, G8OHM and M0GHZ being audible almost any time I checked their frequencies.
23 contacts in all including 7 GM's and 2 GW's, the rest G.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.rsgbcc.org/vhf/kml_files/2010/WGDYQn1nzM1MpwhFjiEltdpObIp3AYT


73 Ray GM4CXM