[VHFcontesting] A wild Idea to Fix Contest Activity

[jimk8mr at aol.com]

I wonder how much of the decline of VHF contests arises from every modern HF transceiver also having six meters? 
For a few months of the year there's lots of action there, and little reason to worry about higher bands.  And people who listen there and hear hiss coming from their radios for the other ten months of the year have little incentive to acquire more radios with which to listen to hiss.

73  -  Jim  K8MR


-----Original Message-----
From: k3sk at buckwalter.co
To: vhfcontesting at contesting.com
Sent: Thu, Jan 13, 2022 8:54 am
Subject: [VHFcontesting] A wild Idea to Fix Contest Activity

Although the VHF/UHF contest survey is over, I just had an idea that could
resolve the FT8 (digital) dominance during the contest.  I just wish I had
thought of this when I did the survey.    My idea would require a change in
the scoring method and the allow multiple contacts with the same station.
Multipliers would remain the same. 

Here's the scoring change proposal ---

1 point for each 2-way digital QSO (FT8, MSK, Q65, etc..) 
2 points for each analog QSO (SSB/CW)

And, the biggest change would be to allow two QSOs per band with each
station.  One Digital and one analog.    Digital would be regardless of
which digital mode used and the analog would be SSB, CW or cross mode
SSB/CW.  

I think this change could provide the incentive to get the crowd off of the
FT8 frequencies and back up on the phone/CW portion of the band and might
even boost the contest activity.  


de K3SK
Dave Buckwalter
FM07 - Farmville VA