[VHFcontesting] 50.125 ..yes, but what about 144.200?

[Stephan Andre']

On Monday 04 June 2007 10:47:19 Kenneth E. Harker wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 04, 2007 at 06:56:49AM -0700, Duane - N9DG wrote:
> > --- Tim  Coad <timcoad at excite.com> wrote:
> > > There might be a problem with 50.125... but the one that
> > > bugs me is the problem where people are glued to 144.200
> > > during the contest.
> >
> > Yes I see this a lot and I don't understand why people think
> > that clinging to .200 is competitive. It hurts your score to
> > do so.
>
> This may or may not be true, depending on the level of activity in
> your part of the country.  In parts of the country where the
> population density on VHF+ is not so dense, the QRM from sharing
> a channel with other stations may not be as big a problem as
> missing other stations because you're on different frequencies from
> one another in the limited time when you're both on the air or
> both have propagation to one another or are pointing toward one
> another.
>
> I've tried the experiment of only calling CQ off 144.200 before,
> and here in STX that made a huge negative impact on my two meter
> score.
>
> So much of VHF contesting is a local experience...

Yeah, things are different in different places.

I was guilty of .200 squatting when I first started trying to get
into the contests; it didn't help that my radio and antennas
were weak enough that I didn't get feedback about what I 
was doing.  I'll bet thats just as true today for newbies, so we
should all remember that when helping/advising others...

I think a reasonable strategy is to camp out on 144.206 or so,
such that people making a beeline for ..200 are likely to find
you and answer.

A first happened to me last  year during one of the contests:
I was calling CQ and hordes of stations answered!  This is the
first time thats ever happened to me; it was fun racking up
4-5 contacts a minute for a while!

The other thing I've noticed, or at least I think this is so, is
that new folks tend to stay above .200 rather than below it.
I did, at first I'm pretty sure.  At the start of my contesting
in 2004 I kept a record of frequency (so few did I make, I
could), and they were almost all above the calling frequences.

--STeve Andre'
wb8wsf  en82