[VHFcontesting] How to increase my score, or why should I try?

[Buck Calabro]

> > Doesn't general contest rule 8 specifically allow club competition?
> > Isn't the point that one wants one's own club to win the contest?
> 
> This has nothing to do with the ARRL Club Competition.  
-snip-
> In both cases, what we have is a single contest 
> operation using more than one callsign to make 
> contacts with itself to artificially boost its score 
> so that one of its callsigns can be the recognized 
> winner of a category in the contest.  

Perhaps I wasn't as clear as I should have been.  The club competition
explicitly recognises that human beings like to help others.  That we,
as social folk like to help people we know.  That altruism is a Good
Thing.

The CA rovers were not a single contest operation - they submitted
individual logs.  They are friends who activated an incredible number
of grids, put 500+ calls into their logs and also worked each other as
they drove.  If anybody else put 500+ calls into the log they'd get a
slap on the back.

The two guys who made 100 less QSOs weren't robotic slaves faithfully
executing the will of 'the master.'  The same goes for the much
maligned 'captive rovers.'  They aren't mindless drones calling home
to 'the mother ship' milling by the thousands, intent on making Mother
the sole winner.

No matter how many times they are portrayed this way, the simple fact
is that they are all individuals, participating as individual
stations.  Like all contesters they are working the stations that are
easiest for them to work.  The undercurrent is that they planned their
strategy before leaving, and that a planned excursion is
unsportsmanlike, whereas random QSOs are the proper way to go about
it.

I never, ever made a random QSO above the 70cm band, and respectfully
submit that physics (i.e. beamwidth) demands some amount of planning
in order to make a successful QSO.  Location (no trees in THAT
direction), timing (they have to be awake) and pointing (narrow
beamwidth) are crucial to making a microwave QSO.

If someone can demonstrate how I can drive to a random hilltop, set my
dishes up in random directions and elevations, call CQ on random
frequencies at random times in a VHF contest with microwaves
(microwaves = points) AND increase my score, then I'm all ears.

Respectfully, KC2HIZ/r, Buck