[VHFcontesting] Pre-contest skeds

[Bill Olson]

>      I guess my concern with skeds made before the contest is that
>you have done a lot of work to get a lot of information "pre-loaded."
>You will already know the other station's callsign, grid square, frequency,
>beam heading, and when they will be there.  This greatly reduces the
>amount of work one has to do during the actual contest period.  It
>can affect band change decisions before and after the sked, for example.
>Advertise your entire sked list beforehand and you're basically spotting
>yourself, just before the contest starts.
>
>     For instance, if I'm in EM10 and I hear a weak signal to the northeast
>on two meters, maybe I get the callsign OK and I hear that the grid square
>is EM32 or maybe EM52.  I'm not sure.  It may take several repeats for me
>to get it.  "Rogers" are a lot easier to distinguish than the difference
>between 32 and 52.  If I'm on a sked and I hear the other station in the
>exact same circumstance, I already know his grid square, I might even 
>already
>know the exact to-the-degree beam heading to peak him up.  I'm sure a lot
>of people in that situation would just send rogers.
>
>     For me, it just doesn't feel right.

Hi all, Well, this is TRUE! But the same holds for moving stations up the 
band - a common practice on VHF that NEVER occurs on HF - , and the signals 
often get WEAKER as one QSY's up, and often the antennas are on the SAME 
mast! To me that seems OK, but it's exactly the same as prearranged skeds as 
far as the above argument goes....

I would be OK with eliminating prearranged skeds if the ARRL thought they 
could enforce it (how would they do that??), but I wouldn't be OK with not 
being able to move a station up... At some point don't we just have to trust 
ourselves to act honestly??

Another thing, VHF is a special "weak signal" case of operating. Maybe just 
hearing the "rogers" is OK. Take the example of TMO reporting on EME. This 
is an example of "pre-loading" by design... By the above reasoning, VERY 
MANY EME qso's now in the books would be bad... I dunno, there is no perfect 
answer here, but the discussion is always healthy I think.

bill, K1DY
FN54, Maine


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