[VHFcontesting] re. W3ZZ's QST contesting article (Tom Carney)

David A. Pruett k8cc at comcast.net
Mon Apr 7 00:46:32 EDT 2003


At 01:51 AM 4/7/03 +0000, jon jones wrote:
>The recent solar cycle peak found many casual ops and HF DXers appearing 
>on 6 Meters due to the F2 DX. Why don't these stations submit logs?

Because there is no reason to.  If they are just there for the DX, they got 
their QSO and maybe the QSL.

Some people send in logs for every contest they operate.  I think many 
people don't, unless they think there is something to shoot for.  With the 
ARRL cutting down the contest writeups in QST, with fewer (if any) boxes 
for top grids and QSOs, these people don't get much satisfaction in digging 
thru piles of scores in the web results database.

The truest statement in W3ZZ's article is that "the current VHF contests 
are de facto microwave contests".  Don't get me wrong, I think microwaves 
are cool but I don't have time to put together a setup for those 
bands.  Maybe I'm typical.

The casual VHFer with a HF/VHF rig has no category to compete in.  There 
are no single-band categories, and even if he puts together a good station 
like an FT-847 with bricks to get to the low power limit, he's still up 
against guys like K9PW with 50 MHz to light.

I know this will anger the single-ops with ten or twelve bands, but if you 
want to encourage activity, IMHO we need a "single op limited" 
category.  If it were me, I would recognize the reality that Japan is not 
likely to build weak-signal radios with 222 MHz capability and so make it 
50/144/432 only.  And none of this "work all bands but exclude enough from 
the log to get into the limited category" crap which is tolerated (or even 
encouraged) in the limited multiop category.

Make the "limited single op" category a legitimate one with high, low, and 
QRP power levels.  If someone wants to mate up a VHF triband radio with KW 
finals, more power to them, but keep a low power category so that they have 
a chance to compete too.  Hey, have a "limited rover" category too.

The argument can be made that these new "limited" categories might siphon 
off activity from the higher bands.  That's possible, but I think the guys 
who are interested in microwaves still will be, and the guys in "limited" 
aren't likely to be interested anyway.  Continue to emphasize the 
"unlimited" categories with the honor they deserve.  However, I'm 
predicting that new limited categories might have more entries than 
unlimited in a few years, but that these will be mostly incremental 
participants.

Doing what we're doing now is what got us to this point.  It's time for 
something different.

73,

Dave/K8CC




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