[VHFcontesting] WTX roving part 2

[K3uhf at aol.com]

I am glad to see that one of the stations involved spoke up. 

This guy is not an idiot, so lets not let frustration lead to name calling.  
He or they are not per say bad operators and they are more technical than most 
of us.  I went back and double checked, I didn't even use a callusing.  

However, someone pointed out the sportsmanship of what they do. I will 
compare it to the complementary breakfast at the Motel 7.  There is no rule against 
eating all the donuts but its not nice to do so. Then to take all the food 
home and feed the family breakfast for a week is not right either.  

The Arrl has came out and said that they frown on planned circling, it is not 
in the January rules but may be in the June rules.  The Arrl has also stated 
that Jan will be the contest where they chop off the 2.4 and up because of 
snow. Some of us suggested moving that idea of theirs to January since mountains 
have snow on them then.  That worked.  Jan may be the last contest like the 
"traditional" Jan contests have been.  Some of the reason behind that was the 
monster scores circling rovers post when using the microwaves.  This would cut 
those scores a lot while punishing the rest of you on the microwave bands with 
one less contest to operate. I have nothing above 1.2 because I question the 
way qsos are sometimes made there. However my opinion is changing as more 
people buy the stuff and more qsos are being made at longer distances. Its becoming 
more of a time spent issue now compared to other bands.

Constant grid circling is not what the ARRL had in mind when it created 
roving.  It has become a cancer in roving because it makes many other people upset, 
much more than speak up here.  It may be killing roving and the activation of 
rare grids for everyone in arrl contests.  

This team says that we must do it like them in order to be competitive, and 
in essence they are saying to do it the way the arrl did not intend to do it or 
don't.  The more of us who would form these teams and post more high scores 
the more the movement to kill roving might grow.

Perhaps these guys were not at any conference where the Arrl said they were 
going to fix this and thought it was not a good thing for the contests as they 
stand now.  I don't expect them to believe it until its written in the rules. 
That alone should be enough for anyone who respects the peers that they submit 
logs with to stop it.

What these guys do may be a sport in itself and maybe there should be a class 
for them in the contest such as team roving or a world record various teams 
could try to beat.  At least in the contest it still behooves them to reach out 
to other stations.  

If they would like to answer I sure would like to know how many qsos were 
made and how many qsos were made with just the party.  It's also interesting that 
they you went there twice if there was so few people there. 

The sad thing is that you may not go out there again once the rules change.  
Perhaps one of you could run I-10 and the other I-40 and that wouldn't set off 
a red flag and would be more sportsmanlike.  

As for the stationary guys, if a rover circles around you it wont be held 
against you when you work each other. It will be the rover to rover qsos that 
will be looked at, as I understand it.  And if 2 rovers ran into each other by 
accident it would be OK to work the 16 grids involved.  However if it happens 
again at another intersections there may be flags.

I guess it is the difference of hunting a deer in the field or on a deer farm 
and being proud if the buck you mounted on the wall.

Frank