03-08-2001, 07:47 PM
George, HB9CPS (hb9cps@qsl.net) writes ...
<h2>A New Old way of contesting</h2>
Contests are great fun! I personally enjoy contesting for a variety of reasons. One, you can enjoy the hobby in a concetrated manner for one or even two days in a row. Two, it keeps you on your toes and challenges your ego. Three, it gives you a measure of how well your equipment is in harmony with your operating procedures.
However, with time, we are losing part of the challenge to computers. It's not only the loging that is done automatically, but also the dupe-checking is no longer a contesters challenge, not to mention things like keying, assigning sequencial numbers and even copying the morse code.
In the earlier days, the score you achieved was representative of your overall skills. You had to find a QSO partner first, then check, whether you already had worked him on the current band (quite a time consuming task after you logged a few hundred qso's in the particular contest), then zero beat your transmitter, re-tune the HF path and finaly make the point.
Today, all you have to do is to make the call. The rest is done automaticaly: the computer logging software informs you immediatelly if it's a dupe and typically you will only abort the QSO after this message. Your transceiver is already in zero beat (TX frequency = RX frequency), even the antenna is already atomatically tuned. Using advanced technology will even tune your tcvr to the spot reported by the DX-Cluster. At the end, it will be computers contacting computers ... and all we'll have to do is checking the scores every evening on how well the computers did. Thus the better equipment decides the race.
Here is my suggestion for contesting more the operator's skills (rather than computers): Use of modern equipment is fine, but let the contester do the hunting! Let's call it the "Tradiditional World CW Contest" (to start somewhere). The first objective is the same as in any other contest: to work as many stations in as many places as possible within the specified time period. The main difference, however, would be: your transmitter is tuned to a fixed frequency (as if you were using your old x-tal controlled TX). Thus the new (old) challenge will be to find the station calling you. Any modern transceiver can do split tcvr and that's all you need. In order to avoid jamming the frequencies, one suggestion of distributing the fixed transmitting QRG's would be have your TX frequency (the last digit in kHz) follow the number in your call sign. E.g. HB9CPS would be using any of the 7.009, 7.019, 7.029, 7.039 KHz; while WB2DPC would be using any of the 7.002, 7.012, 7.022 etc. kHz. (alternatively 14.002, 14.012, ...). You can strategically select a new QRG anytime as long as you stay within 1 KHz of your call sign digit.
This would have to be a dedicated contest. You would never achieve a reasonable score in the CQWW using this technique. But everybody using the same method would be competitive. The total numeber of QSO's per contest would be much lower than we are used these days. But the best operator would still win the contest.
Does this sound like new fun? Well, it has been on the market for quite some time and that was how I started contesting many moons ago. Let me know what you think of this.
<h2>A New Old way of contesting</h2>
Contests are great fun! I personally enjoy contesting for a variety of reasons. One, you can enjoy the hobby in a concetrated manner for one or even two days in a row. Two, it keeps you on your toes and challenges your ego. Three, it gives you a measure of how well your equipment is in harmony with your operating procedures.
However, with time, we are losing part of the challenge to computers. It's not only the loging that is done automatically, but also the dupe-checking is no longer a contesters challenge, not to mention things like keying, assigning sequencial numbers and even copying the morse code.
In the earlier days, the score you achieved was representative of your overall skills. You had to find a QSO partner first, then check, whether you already had worked him on the current band (quite a time consuming task after you logged a few hundred qso's in the particular contest), then zero beat your transmitter, re-tune the HF path and finaly make the point.
Today, all you have to do is to make the call. The rest is done automaticaly: the computer logging software informs you immediatelly if it's a dupe and typically you will only abort the QSO after this message. Your transceiver is already in zero beat (TX frequency = RX frequency), even the antenna is already atomatically tuned. Using advanced technology will even tune your tcvr to the spot reported by the DX-Cluster. At the end, it will be computers contacting computers ... and all we'll have to do is checking the scores every evening on how well the computers did. Thus the better equipment decides the race.
Here is my suggestion for contesting more the operator's skills (rather than computers): Use of modern equipment is fine, but let the contester do the hunting! Let's call it the "Tradiditional World CW Contest" (to start somewhere). The first objective is the same as in any other contest: to work as many stations in as many places as possible within the specified time period. The main difference, however, would be: your transmitter is tuned to a fixed frequency (as if you were using your old x-tal controlled TX). Thus the new (old) challenge will be to find the station calling you. Any modern transceiver can do split tcvr and that's all you need. In order to avoid jamming the frequencies, one suggestion of distributing the fixed transmitting QRG's would be have your TX frequency (the last digit in kHz) follow the number in your call sign. E.g. HB9CPS would be using any of the 7.009, 7.019, 7.029, 7.039 KHz; while WB2DPC would be using any of the 7.002, 7.012, 7.022 etc. kHz. (alternatively 14.002, 14.012, ...). You can strategically select a new QRG anytime as long as you stay within 1 KHz of your call sign digit.
This would have to be a dedicated contest. You would never achieve a reasonable score in the CQWW using this technique. But everybody using the same method would be competitive. The total numeber of QSO's per contest would be much lower than we are used these days. But the best operator would still win the contest.
Does this sound like new fun? Well, it has been on the market for quite some time and that was how I started contesting many moons ago. Let me know what you think of this.