[VHFcontesting] [222Activity] An idea for the sprints.

[w5zn at w5zn.org]

Gretings Dave and 222 gang.

Well, I'll confess I bailed after two hours, around 9:00 PM local, 
because I had worked all the folks I knew who were on but more 
importantly I was ready to snooze! :-)). I didn't give it any further 
thought until your email that got me thinking about this!

Now that 222 has become a focus of several of us working toward WAS and 
there is renewed interest on the band, especially with MS and EME for 
some, it would have been good to fire up the EME station if for no other 
reason than to check things out and have a few folks do the same.

It would be good for me to do some advance planning for the Sprint. I 
usually just fire up for an hour or so and then that is it but I like 
your idea/suggestion.

73 Joel W5ZN


On 2020-10-01 15:01, David Olean wrote:
> It isn't much of an idea, more a suggestion, to not abandon the VHF
> sprints when activity dies down after the initial spurt of activity. 
> I was not a big fan of opening up chat pages for coordination of
> contacts in VHF contests. My reasoning was that it favored stations
> that had good internet connectivity and penalized those that did not.
> 
> That being said, we now have the ability to set up schedules for
> almost impossible contacts simply  by coordinating on internet sites
> dedicated to such things. So why did everyone bail out after an hour
> or so on the 222 Sprint?  The few diehards left were ones that I had
> already contacted.  It would have been great to try some long haul
> tropo contacts on CW or even FT4/FT8 with stations that are normally
> not in range. Trying and failing at a 400+ mile QSO with a 25 watt
> station or trying a meteor scatter contact is much more agreeable than
> spending an hour calling CQ and tuning around on a almost empty band
> with no takers and no results.  A few posts for skeds by several of
> the diehards also went unheeded towards the latter half of the
> sprint.  The last hour, when things die down is the time to experiment
> and see what your station can do even if it is outside of your comfort
> zone.  The worst that can happen is that the path does not work! 
> Then, there is the problem of which chat page to monitor. Having poor
> connectivity makes monitoring a number of them impossible for many
> operators.  On a good day, I might be able to cover two chat pages. 
> We should set up a standardization for the sprints so people are all
> looking at the same place.
> 
> So next time, think twice about quitting early! Do something exciting 
> instead.
> 
> 73
> 
> Dave K1WHS
> 
> 
> 
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