According to the results I came 109th out of 180 in the AL section. Considering I use 5W to a 2m halo fed via very lossy RG58 coax, I am quite pleased. I usually stay on for about 30 minutes only as my voice is poor.
11 Jan 2019
70cm UKAC results for the year
According to the results I came 109th out of 180 in the AL section. Considering I use 5W to a 2m halo fed via very lossy RG58 coax, I am quite pleased. I usually stay on for about 30 minutes only as my voice is poor.
IMO, contests are meaningless. They are contrived efforts to artificially generate activity. And they succeed in that, to the degree that contests produce brief, empty, content-free exchanges. But they don't indicate who is the best operator or who has the best skills, and they don't have much effect on increasing activity *outside* of the contest. The winner tends to be the person that cares the most about winning contests.
ReplyDeleteDeeper than that, contests are an implicit admission that there's not enough organic, spontaneous activity to keep operators interested in regularly getting on the air.
Hi Todd,
ReplyDeleteI am not a great lover of contests and agree with many of your comments and go on usually purely to work new squares and because people are active. Here in the UK the monthly UKAC activity contests are friendly and good spirited. My poor voice usually stops me after about 30-60 minutes. It is a pity there is not more activity between contests. Meaningless? Maybe, but at least they encourage activity. Here in the UK you are always guaranteed lots of SSB stations to be worked on 2m (first Tuesdays) and 70cm (second Tuesdays). It proves my 5W to omni antennas get a lot further than expected and a lot further than casually calling CQ might do. The day I win a contest would be one to ring every church bell in the country!