[VHFcontesting] 6M only category & other ideas.

[Dave Olean]

Jim,
    Forgive the lateness of my response, but I have been in thinking mode 
prior to replying.
    I would agree with you about the addition of a six meter only category 
causing a fair amount of havoc in the current VHF contest format. Higher 
freq contacts would dry up in precisely the areas where we all want to 
encourage more participation. (far away from the Golden Corridor between NYC 
and Washington DC.)  I enjoy reading all your posts. Ditto on the Limited 
Rover class too.
     I am bothered by numerous comments lately that indicate that 
participant "A" will stop contesting if certain rules are changed or modes 
are forbidden. I am also bothered by the comments that some new VHF operator 
will not enter the contest unless there is a pre made category to match his 
or her specific conditions.  So if an HF operator discovers one day that his 
5 kilobuck competition grade transceiver has a six meter position, and he 
uses it one weekend in a VHF contest, why should he or she expect to win 
anything?  Rather than making the fish bowl smaller to cater to the fact 
that his radio only has one VHF band position, I think the proper thing to 
do is give him the incentive to try to improve his score by trying new bands 
and making improvements. The problem is that HFers think a band is dead when 
they hear no signals on it. HF contesters are also very competitive. Their 
participation is only assured when there are stations waiting to be worked 
on the VHF bands, much as you described also in ur post. Attracting HF ops 
to VHF is the only way to save our VHF bands. VHF is dying now.  (I just got 
on 160 meters so I can work people in the winter. It is not possible on VHF 
now.)
    Building activity on the VHF bands will not be done by manipulating a 
few contest rules. Activity will be built by having a nucleus of constant 
activity on the higher bands. I am not holding my breath.  The bands are 
very quiet in Maine as a rule. They have been getting worse over the past 
few years.  I applaud the efforts of a small but growing group on 144.205. 
They are making a point of getting on every morning at 8 AM on 144.205. Stan 
KA1ZE started it and it has really grown and caused a resurgence of activity 
in the NYC area. This effort needs to be implemented across the country. It 
also requires a lot of missionary work and effort. It is not for the faint 
of heart. It is a big committment. The good news is that results beget more 
results! There needs to be a reason for many more people to get on the VHF 
bands
    This brings up another point. You are not going to have any real success 
on VHF unless you put the same amount of money or resources into your 
antenna as you put into your radio. I know some ops are in places that do 
not allow large antennas. For that situation, portable or rover operation is 
a good, if part time, solution.   If you hook up your $5,000 HF radio to a 
long wire, simple vertical, or small indoor antenna, you are not going to 
hear what the bands really offer, and no one will know that you even exist.
    Where is Sam Harris when we need him? He was W1FZJ/ W1BU, the VHF column 
editor back in the early 1960's. He was constantly railing to push the 
VHFers of the time to get off their butts and make their stations perform 
better.  If you could not work 500 miles on 144 MHz in 1960, your station 
was broken in his opinion. He backed all this up by telling you how to do it 
every month in his column. Lately the VHF column talks of  50 MHz openings 
and of people hanging around waiting for certain paths to be workable. It 
reminds me of the gossip pages in old newspapers. "The Ellis's  had visitors 
over the last week when they entertained the Garvey fanmily from East 
Paducah. They canned 7 quarts of peach preserves, and played Canasta." 
There are very few pages devoted to pushing the envelope in other areas of 
our fascinating VHF hobby. Contrast the columns of today with one of Sam's 
columns. I am enclosing a portion of an old column for your enjoyment....

If you have read this far, you are probably sitting there asking yourself, 
“What does he expect me to do now?” The answer is, I expect you to get to 
work, and prove that you do have the initiative, the ambition, or just plain 
gumption, to be listed as a member of the v.h.f. fraternity. Look around at 
your receiving setup. How much feedline loss do you have? If it’s more than 
1/2 a dB, fix it. Do you have a tunable coaxial filter in front of your 
converter? If you don’t, why not? The use of a coaxial filter in front of 
your converter almost invariably provides an improvement in received 
signal-to-noise ratio. In addition, it filters out the commercial garbage 
generally experienced in the urban areas. And it provides the first step 
towards constructing your parametric amplifier. I don’t suggest that you go 
out and buy a coaxial filter, but rather that you get busy and build one. 
The best test for a properly operating filter is to install it in front of 
your converter while listening to a weak signal. If the signal remains the 
same or improves slightly, your filter is doing its job. If the signal 
decreases in strength, one of two things is happening: (a) your filter is 
not working properly or (b) your converter is matched to the feed line 
better than any converter I have ever seen. In any event, with a 
perfectly-matched converter the coaxial filter loss should not exceed 0.2 
dB.

If you got this far and you still don’t know how to build a parametric 
amplifier, and if you don’t want to wait for a 1296 Mc paramp being 
described in QST next month, I suggest you drop me a line stating your 
problem. When it comes to parametric amplifiers I am as full of helpful 
hints as Lew McCoy talking to a Novice.

>From Sam Harris' VHF column "The World Above 50 Megacycles"  September, 1960



    One odd thing is that some of the best propagation on VHF occurs in the 
more southerly climes in places where activity is slight. If there was more 
activity there, scores would easily outstrip anything done in PA, CT or MA 
where conditions are usually not so good. 500 mile contacts in the southeast 
are much easier than up in the colder, tropo free zone where most of the 
activity is now. The problem is to get people active there with good antenna 
systems. Texas Georgia, N Carolina, and Florida have huge ham populations. 
They are just not on VHF in any large numbers.
    Do not look to the ARRL to fix our VHF bands. We have to look at a 
mirror instead. The ARRL can help to improve activity however.   One way the 
ARRL might help is to support VHF more aggressively and encourage many more 
short operating activities on the pages of QST or on their website. We need 
a contest every weekend during the Summer months. It can be a small contest 
for just a short time period, say four hours. It just has to be there to 
attract a few operators, and build from there. It can also be different each 
week to address different situations. VHF area clubs are important here too. 
They need to be involved. Note that a radio club in Oregon sponsors one of 
the most enjoyable 160 meter contests of the year. (The Stew Perry) 
Remember that much of the VHF activity in the Golden Corridor happened there 
because of VHF oriented club activity that started at a critical time. 
Maybe local VHF clubs can sponsor activity periods or contests in specific 
geographical areas. There are many state QSO parties on the low bands. 
Indeed there are many contests on HF every day. VHF needs the same 
treatment. Clubs need a Contest Coordinator more than just about anything 
else.  How about a contest period where everyone is limited to 10 watts. How 
about a contest where points are only scored when you work a specific area? 
I would like to see a short activity/contest where we all have to contact 
stations in, say, Ontario to get points. It would be goofy, but it would 
foster activity and cause VE3s to get on the air. The next time it could be 
Vermont or Oregon. How about SSB only?  CW only? meteor scatter only?  How 
about a contest where everyone has to work a rover?  Of course the results 
would have to be tabulated and written up even if on the web. I see a lot of 
room for creativity here. The VHF clubs have to get tremendously involved to 
pull such things off. Things need to be shaken up. We need a VHF sprint type 
event every few nights! We need reasons to be active.  We all need to be the 
solution.

73

Dave K1WHS

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Duffey" <jamesduffey at comcast.net>
To: "VHF Contesting Reflector" <vhfcontesting at contesting.com>; 
<rt_clay at bellsouth.net>
Cc: "James Duffey" <jamesduffey at comcast.net>
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2015 1:09 AM
Subject: [VHFcontesting] 6M only category


Tor - One can enter 6M only in the CQ WW VHF contest. Lots of guys do it. It 
is one of the reasons the contest is so popular. The only real drawback to 
this is that Es is on the downswing when the contest is held in the middle 
to end of July. If the contest were held earlier, say the weekend between 
the VHF contest and Field Day, or even the first weekend in July, I think it 
would give the ARRL contest a good run for its money.

Having said this, I think that if you had a 6M only category in a general 
ARRL VHF/UHF contest it would reduce the activity on the higher bands. I 
disagree with you on this item. That is OK. Dialog is good in these things. 
I think that the reduction in microwave activity that has resulted from the 
introduction of the limited multi-op category and the migration of Classic 
Rovers to the Limited Rover category is proof of this.

If the HF contesters who migrate to 6M want more contest activity than 6M 
offers, they can get on 144 MHz or 432 MHz and work stations up there. 
Granted there aren’t as many, and the rates are slow but it is not that hard 
to get on those bands these days and there are often VHF+ operators who are 
willing to loan rigs to new VHF ops. As a rover, I often pass out grids to 
those 6M ops that they would not otherwise get. It would be nice if they 
could get on the higher bands and give me a few more QSOes in return. But 
when I suggest it they say no one is on those bands so it isn’t worth 
getting on. That, of course is a self fulfilling prophecy. When I remind 
them that I am on, they say, well you are the only one, but then I say Bill 
is out there roving too, and there are a few other well equipped 2M stations 
around, and they kind of go ummmm. I suspect the truth is that when the 
propagation dies on 6M, the rates also drop, and most HF contesters come 
from a culture where rates are everything. At VHF rates are usually low and 
DX contacts can take 10 minutes instead of 20 seconds at HF. That is OK, but 
we need to realize that VHF contesting is not for everyone, and if making it 
more appealing to HF contesters reduces current VHF activity, then the price 
of attracting new ops to VHF contesting is too high.

I don’t think that 6M activity is the problem in declining VHF+ contesting 
activity.

If you have not done so, please make your opinions known to the Ad Hoc 
Committee. - Duffey, KK6MC


On Jan 5, 2015, at 4:53 PM, vhfcontesting-request at contesting.com wrote:

> I think the biggest source of new VHF contesters are active HF contesters.
> Most now have 6M but none of the other bands. The one thing that would get
> more HF-types on VHF would be a 6M single band category. Looking through 
> the
> June VHF contest results you will find a number of HF contester calls who
> made a few contacts on 6M (also check 3830 since many of these guys don't
> bother to submit a log). If there was a 6M category some of these stations
> would be enticed to operate the whole contest on 6M because they would
> actually have a category they could compete in. And after a few years,
> some of these guys would get interested in the higher bands and try
> the all-band categories. I don't buy the argument that this would
> decrease higher band activity- more stations on in the contest is good, 
> period.



--
KK6MC
James Duffey
Cedar Crest NM





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