[Moon-net] ARRL contest....an after thought

[Charlie Kahwagi]

What a great weekend on uW EME. Thanks to all the stations whom took the time to contact me, especially when  my window  meant  little reward for less sleep  between the main activity periods.

I have just had a little email exchange with a few stations anout the WE and  I got thinking.......

1. I know there a very few ops in the southern hemisphere at present ,  and no amount of singing and dancing and shouting will change things but it sure would be nice to have contests with the moon a little higher in the sky and the windows just that little bit longer............wishful thinking I know....majority rules...etc....

but a more important point:

2.  The No. of stations on 13cm and 3 cm  judging by the reports is staggering.  Being QRV on 4 bands I had to make a decision to restrict myself to 2 bands because of time..............In truth I could have run with 13cm  all weekend and I still wouldn't have worked everyone that I potentially could of.  ....and all of this from a QRP station...what about the big guns.....
Gentlemen are we shooting ourselves in the foot  and DISCOURAGING activity by having  a contest where 13, 9, 6 , 3 and 1.25 (potentially) are on the same weekend!
Contests are supposed to encourage activity.............If you are QRV on 13cm  why would you want to add another band....obviously for the technical challenge,  but certainly not to make yourself busy during the ARRL 2304 and up weekend.
It seems that to extract the full potential of activity that could be encouraged on the uW EME bands  we might need seperate weekends for these very busy bands or  lots more "activity weekends" like Peter and Al recently organised for 9cm.
...............am I off the track with this one?   If  so I'll crawl back into my hole.

I just feel that there was an enourmous amount of activity on the bands I did and didn't operate on and that there might be a better way to harness that enthusiasm into  more activity weekends.   (those that do operate on more than 1 band might also get a little more sleep!)

I am not sure if any of this has been bought up before  and I realise that there are disadvantages and advantages to splitting the contest  over say 2 or 3 weekends  so before you "return fire"  at my thoughts  please be gentle....I'm only new to this!

73
and tnx for all the QSO's
Charlie
VK3NX