[VHFcontesting] 6 & 10 Contest- [ Unintended Consequences ]

[Les Rayburn]

Duane makes some excellent points. At my office, we often evaluate new 
ideas and public relations strategies by conducting what are called "Red 
Team Exercises". Essentially, you ask half your staff to play devil's 
advocate, and look for the problems in the proposed strategy.

A big part of that effort usually involves looking at unintended 
consequences, and it's wise to consider that before voicing support or 
rejecting the idea.

One thing that the notes from the ARRL meeting do not reveal is 
motivation. We don't know if the committee was concerned about drawing 
more HF operators into 6 Meter operation, or increasing activity on 10 
Meters. Given that the proposal also mentions a 10 Meter Grid Award, I 
suspect it's the later.

If the primary desire is to increase operation on 10 Meters during 
non-solar peak periods, then the idea(s) probably have merit. Grid based 
awards do not rely on F2 propagation to achieve, unlike DXCC. A FFMA 
type award that could be earned using mainly e-skip would likely spur 
more activity on 10 Meters. A 6 & 10 contest then makes sense, 
especially during the summer when e-skip is most likely. An unintended 
consequence of such an award might be more grid expeditions in rare 
grids that would include both 6M and 10M efforts.

While Duane attributes the declining activity above 2 Meters on rules 
changes, and the introduction of the CQ VHF contest, I'm not sure that 
conclusion can be proven. Even if those factors are significant 
contributors to the problem, they are not the only factors. Other causes 
might include:

  * VUCC burn-out. Most active operators that are interested in chasing
    awards on these bands have already done so. Grid expeditions have
    certainly decreased over the past several years (with the exception
    of those for FFMA on 6 Meters). Thank God K5N often incorporates 2
    Meters. (Thanks Dan!)
  * Economic down-turn and the rapidly rising cost of fuel have
    discouraged the construction of large "super-stations" and put a
    dent in roving.
  * The increase in deed restrictions and HOA's have made it more
    difficult for hams to build multi-band antenna systems. While you
    can "hide a wire" or small vertical to get you on HF, it's actually
    harder to generate decent VHF/UHF and microwave signals from these
    situations.


One area that I've been looking into is the creation of a Five Band VUCC 
Award (5BVUCC) that might encourage hams to "add bands" in pursuit of 
that award. I think the league also needs to do a major PR campaign to 
build the status of the VUCC Award overall. Adding merchandise with the 
VUCC logo, and increasing desire among the awards community to earn VUCC 
awards would help activity on our bands.

Great input, Duane.

-- 
--
73,

Les Rayburn, N1LF
121 Mayfair Park
Maylene, AL 35114
EM63nf

6M VUCC #1712
AMSAT #38965
Grid Bandits #222
Southeastern VHF Society
Central States VHF Society Life Member
Six Club #2484

Active on 6 Meters thru 1296, 10GHz & Light


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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2014 17:10:09 -0700
From: Duane - N9DG via VHFcontesting<vhfcontesting at contesting.com>
To:vhfcontesting at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [VHFcontesting] ARRL Proposal for a combined 10 Meter & 6
	Meter	Contest
Message-ID:
	<1409875809.36270.YahooMailBasic at web126206.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii


I would tread lightly on this idea, and stop to really think through the likely operator participation behaviors that it would induce. It strikes me as something that could have the undesired side effect of actually diluting the participation levels in the major VHF contests on 6M and up.

Many of the various rules and category changes over the years were primarily designed to "lower the barriers" for participation as an effort to entice new operators to get on VHF contests. But in reality, they so far seem to all have had some pretty undesirable side effects. And in many cases I think that they have actually reduced the number of bands being used, and reduced power levels used by participants in VHF contests. Or to put it another way, each of those changes often took away incentive for building bigger gun stations with lots of bands, in the end that hurts everyone. Some examples I can think of:

1. ARRL splitting SO into SOLP and SOHP - side effect was that many stations that were building up stations towards higher levels of power on 6M and up decided not to (I'll even admit to being guilty of doing that myself).
2. ARRL creating Limited Multi-Op - side effect was multi ops who previously worked on including bands above 432, dropped all of them (I still think Limited MO should limit the number of operators, not bands).
3. I get the impression that Limit Rover category may have done a similar thing to the number of bands that rovers try to equip for.
4. SO3B - side effect, a disturbing number of former SOLPs have now downshifted to SO3B, and have no motivation or desire to add 222, or any of the higher bands above 432 for that matter.

Another pattern that I think has gotten more common over the last 10 years or so is that the major all band ARRL VHF contests are increasingly evolving into almost 6M only events.

My fear of having a 10 & 6M contest is that it will make many to decide to skip one or more of the exiting all band VHF contests and only focus on 10 and 6 contesting. I think CQ WW VHF being 6 & 2 only event has already had that kind of impact on the ARRL UHF contest. There is a saturation factor for the number of contests that people can take out time to participate in.

When it is all said and done, 6M is already more like HF than V/UHF as far people getting on and actually operating. 6M is actually a fairly ho-hum band for participation until there is some Es, then it becomes just like 10M.  So I struggle to see how mixing 10 and 6 in a contest will eventually lead to more participation on 2M and up. It is the 2M band and up where we truly need more operators.

Duane
N9DG