[VHFcontesting] Announcements and VHF contesting....

[Marshall-K5QE]

Hello to everyone interested in the "Assistance" concept for VHF 
contesting....

My last post was made at 2AM, so I am not sure how coherent it was.  
Hopefully, not too bad.....

Les-N1LF made an observation recently that was, I believe, terribly 
important.  He observed that A)All VHF contesting is local, B)Those in 
the famous "Golden Corridor" have a tremendous advantage over the rest 
of us who live in the sticks(the high population density of hams), and 
that C)To a very large extent, those that oppose "assistance" live in 
the NE.  LES, I hope I have stated the gist of your post correctly.

Jay-W9RM made a post wherein he talked about ANNOUNCEMENTS rather than 
Assistance.  I think that this is a genius idea.  The concept of 
"assistance" has become way too fuzzy and ill defined.  It means 
different things to different folks.  The Anti-Assistance folks have 
taken advantage of this in various nefarious ways.  To way too many, 
"assistance" means making real time schedules during the 
contest....which I don't really see anything wrong with, but the legacy 
HFers go into heart fibrillations whenever this is mentioned. By the 
way, Announcements would make "real time scheduling" unnecessary.

I propose that we start talking about making ANNOUNCEMENTS in VHF 
contesting.  An ANNOUNCEMENT will have to be carefully defined to 
prevent abuse.  Although CQ does not mention announcements, it is clear 
that their concept is that IF you are calling CQ on digital meteor 
scatter(MS) or digital EME, you can announce Call, Frequency, and 
Sequence ONLY on the Internet reflectors, packet clusters, whatever.  
Such an announcement does not convey any QSO information, only that you 
are calling CQ and where you are located.  When you receive a call and 
get a good decode, you will receive both his call and your call, so all 
QSO information has passed over the radio path--thus satisfying Tilton's 
Rule.

I propose that an Announcement should be defined to be your Call, 
Frequency, and Sequence ONLY.  The idea of posting Call, Frequency, and 
Sequence ONLY was first brought forward by a very well known Pacific 
Northwest VHFer(and a couple of others as I recall), so it is not my 
idea, but it is an incredibly good idea. If we follow the CQ idea, an 
Announcement would be permitted only for stations calling CQ on digital 
MS or digital EME.

ASIDE1:  Why allow Announcements for those modes and not for others??  
Digital EME signals are quite often not detectable by ear.  So, you 
could "turn the dial" until the cows come home and you would never hear 
a weak digital EME signal.  You would tune right past it.  However, I 
work such signals all the time and others can as well, IF they can find 
them.  If I Announce "CQ K5QE 144.142MHz Second" then everyone knows 
where I am.  Just tune there and see if you can work me.  I want to 
stress this--An Announcement does not WORK anyone, you have to actually 
do that yourself.   Only then can you put them in the log.  As Jay-W9RM 
has so carefully pointed out, if someone intent on cheating were to 
enter me into his log just based on my Announcement, when the log 
checking process was applied, the bogus QSO would be removed from his 
log and he would be penalized points.  It seems to me that no one is 
stupid enough to do this.....but I am probably wrong on that.

ASIDE2:  Meteor scatter is not a weak signal mode, but signals are 
essentially random in time.  If you carefully tune a given frequency, 
say 50.265MHz, you most likely will not hear anything. After you tune 
away trying to find a signal somewhere else, a large burn may occur.   
What this means is that tuning for MS signals is essentially a waste of 
time....you will very likely never hear anything.  A simple Announcement 
solves this problem very nicely.  Now stations all around the country 
know where I am calling CQ.  IF they are within MS range, they can try 
to call me and hopefully a QSO will result.  This system is FAR superior 
to the system that we now use(everyone calls on 50.260MHz with an offset 
frequency where the QSO is supposed to actually take place).  Seasoned 
MS ops know the current system and for them it works OK.  Newer ops 
really don't understand what is going on and contacts with them are 
frequently lost because they don't understand the idea of moving to make 
a QSO.  An Announcement would tell everyone where I am calling CQ with 
no need for the "bait and switch" method we now have.

I believe that we should all contact our Director and request that 
Announcements be allowed in VHF contesting for digital MS and digital 
EME.  This is not going to rend the fabric of VHF contesting, but it 
sure will make it a lot more fun as dozens of "rare" grids will now find 
their way into the logs.  I don't think that this is too much of a 
stretch for the folks at the League. If it is, then we are DOOMED as my 
son likes to say.

I forwarded my previous post to my Director, and I will do the same with 
this one.  We need to try to get the Directors to understand what needs 
to be done....

73 Marshall K5QE