[UK-CONTEST] IARU Region 1 SSB Fieldday 2012 Deutschland/Germany

[dave]

I certainly agree that an aim of Contesting is to develop operating 
skill - but I think that is equally important to encourage technical 
progress - or should we still be limited to 10w dc input as when I first 
entered NFD? I suppose a "skill" in those days was quickly "netting" the 
TX to the RX frequency in that pre-transceiver era.

My reference to two interlocked TXs was to CW NFD, and was permitted in 
the Open Section for the first time this year, along with an on-site SDR 
to  populate band-maps.  Our Team's skills, both operating and 
technical, were certainly enhanced.

I don't follow the inexpensive equipment thread - most stations used K3s 
or FT1000s, neither cheap, and in the Open section there is also the 
Linear to consider and almost certainly a beam and tower. Some Teams 
will always have "better" equipment available than others. I don't see 
why stations that don't have a beam/tower and linear available should 
not be able to experiment with an array of antennas as we now can in 
RSGB NFD Restricted section. The antennas are the one element of a 
station that can be cheap. I would like to see those innovative rules 
introduced for CW NFD also being adopted for SSB FD.

For our Group, a large part of the fun of Field Days is seeing how much 
technology we can set up in 24 hours, I don't think I would bother to go 
out if all I was going to put up was a doublet - simplicity has never 
entered the equation for us.

I agreed with the banning of Cluster or RBN in CW FD - I don't think 
they enhance operating skill in any way, rather the opposite. I think 
that FD stations should be totally self-contained and sef-sufficient.

73

Dave G3TBK