[VHFcontesting] ARRL UHF Thoughts

[Jarred Jackson]

Very few of the proposed rules changes appear to align with my comments from last year.  However there are a few things I like about the proposed rules (I will hold all negative comments and criticism for the committee)


The proposed rules make this a very different kind of contest, which I like. This makes this a unique style of contest within the ARRL lineup. It requires a different strategy and encourages me to build a better station and find better locations that are a but farther away. I will have no problem giving up former strategies that leveraged short range contacts to add multipliers. I had a taste of a similar style of contest with 10GHz last year. I enjoyed it.


I like the concept of team competition. There are typically a handful of people I coordinate with anyway.  This aspect has the potential to encourage us to work together even more and plan ahead (for me, this would be fun if we had at least 2 or 3 teams participating and nothing discouraged us from supporting each other).


Re-allocating into regions also adds a different element to the contest. Putting WNY and VE3 in the same region makes a lot of sense since we often talk across the lake. Again, doing something different makes it interesting to me.


I like allowing rovers to also participate in multi-op stations. It was not clear to me that this was allowed before. If the rovers can also make contacts with the multi-op, I can see myself trying this.


I contest for the fun and challenge of it. Almost all of my activity is in the rover category and I am a relative newcomer having started roving in just 2014. Competing with other good stations is important to me, but winning is not. Assuming a few of the kinks in the proposal get worked out, I will participate and hope you will too.


Jarred - KF2MR (50-3456+10G)