ARRL September VHF Contest - 2023
Call: W3SO
Operator(s): W3XOX W3BTX N3VRO KB3RQU
Station: W3SO
Class: Limited Multi-Op HP
QTH: PA
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 119 48
2: 121 50
222:
432:
903:
1.2:
2.3:
3.4:
5.7:
10G:
24G:
-------------------
Total: 240 98 Total Score = 23,250
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
I'm really trying not to hate on FT8 but I can't say enough how it has sucked
the fun right out of the balloon. We spent an entire weekend clicking a mouse so
that the computer could work someone, not my kind of fun and near zero
excitement. There was no adrenalin rush as we had multiple ops vying for our
contact in a mini pile-up.
The contest finished out with 240 QSO's as I stared at a sticky note on the wall
with 6 meter having 453 qso's, 2 meters having 423 QSO's, 432 and 222 not far
behind. There was a rare time when more than 2 stations would show on the band
scope or spotting as being on SSB, where the QSO rate and excitement rate would
be many times that of clicking a mouse. All of this, as I sit in a station
built from the ground up to contest on VHF, and all the while thinking to myself
that from this point forward no one would ever put this kind of investment or
time into building a station of this magnitude so that they could sit there and
work a QSO rate of 20-30 an hour at max. Yes, I think that FT8 has brought a few
more operators into contesting that may not have been there otherwise, but the
blow that it is dealing contesting will kill the excitement and draw.
There I said it, FT8 needs to go away from contesting or be cordoned off in some
way, shape or form. Yes it has it's place, but it's place is not every waking
minute of a contest.
W3XOX
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