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

[peter blair]

1) Moon position in contests has been debated a lot of times,  I know its a 
generalisation but I suspect the S hemisphere stations are better able to 
cope with low moon elevations ( High Northerly declinations) because a lot 
of you live in areas where there is less control over antenna heights  and 
towers. In the North we atre lucky in many cases to be able to put up a dish 
at all and often the authorities will want it placed  so that it is 
screened. ( Alex is the exception!) So please indulge us on the higher 
declinations
2)  I have always enjoyed the multiband aspects of eme contests  and the 
element of " strategy" that  comes in with band choice. The DUBUS mix may be 
a better one but again I think its good  not to have two identical formats 
( DUBUS/ARRL)
3) Personally I favour just having more activity weekends like the 3.4 one 
this summer. I think a lot of people enjoyed that because it wasnt a contest 
but more of a testing of equipment and experimenting with different 
components of the system over the two days  and , dare I say it, it reminded 
some of us of the earlier days of eme but with the internet replacing the 
Roneo newsletter.
 4) Ive tried to put together a list of the  top scores on 13cm  in the ARRL 
contests. If anyone has a better list then please contribute. I know 
2001-2003 is right because they came directly out of ARRL log data but 
2004-2007  have to be inferred from the results tabulation together with EME 
NL data. Typically the top scores will be about 2-3 below the total number 
of stations active
2001 5, 2002 10, 2003 15, 2004 19, 2006 26, 2007 30+ ( I think there were 
about 35 active) It makes a nice looking graph
It really is climbing, could someone from DUBUS dig out the same data for 
that contest.
5) This issue is what my old boss used to call " a high class problem!".. 
nice.
Good contribution Charlie. Ive posted this to Moon reflector as well, lots 
of microwave types on that one as well.
73 Peter G3LTF
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Charlie Kahwagi" <ibnkarim at bigpond.net.au>
To: "MOON_NET" <moon-net at list-serv.davidv.net>
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 11:53 AM
Subject: [Moon-net] ARRL contest....an after thought


> 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
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