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

[Ray James]

--- On Sat, 13/2/10, Rob Harrison <robharrison at g8hgn.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

> I should have chosen my contest title more carefully. I
> said NAC, well NAC is on that night, as is UKAC, most of the other European countries also have a contest on that night.

I think you're wrong Bob but I'm happy to be corrected.
The only regular contests on a Tuesday evening are NAC's from 6pm until 10pm and UKAC's from 8pm until 10.30pm. Occasionally you'll find the Dutch squares contest coincides with one of those Tuesdays.
NAC's also run on 6m on a Thursday and their 13cm on the 4th Tuesday. 
The only reason that amateurs in countries which don't run a contest appear is that activity attracts activity and naturally folk enjoy putting their equipment investment to good use.   


> You're correct in your observations regarding "fresh" meat.
> From the point of view of a contest station, he's going to go for the best pts/qso rate he can, and as we are to the west of Europe in general, east is where all the activity is. If however a juicy GM/GI is offered on a
> plate, he'll swing the antenna, or use the 2nd system to get that in the log and then go back to the "killing fields".

Which I'm sure most would agree does nothing for encouraging greater UK activity. In fact the opposite. It's a massive turn off as shown by the numbers entering or participating out with populous areas of England and that is not healthy for VHF+ throughout the whole of the UK. 
Those "killing fields" on the continent have an abundance of contest and non-contest DX'ing activity whereas the UK doesn't. There is a calendar full of contests that run on the same principal so why not have something unique to enhancing UK participation in what is after all a unique UK contest? For this reason I have in past suggested that in UKAC's that continental contacts count only for PPKm, no square multiplier. 

The ideal format for UKAC in my opinion would be PPKm, UK Squares as a multiplier, and to encourage much greater total UK participation, the District Code as used last weekend during the 1st 160m CW contest. Alternatively, PPKm, no square multiplier but the District Code as a multiplier. That would really go a massive way to encouraging greater whole UK participation and make them more interesting tactically. 
Something sadly missing at present. 

73 Ray GM4CXM