Klasický QRP supply 2009 - comment
Every race is different. The QRP race was known by the team, that the warm beautiful weather drew fans of small performances to the hills, who, with simple antennas, hunted for connections with others equally afflicted. The Italians played the loudspeaker cleanly and clearly, they came on the first call, a large number of ex-Yugoslavs, all spiced up by a crowd of Germans, Everything worked for decades, until something went wrong. It started to rain about the race. Italians, pravda, they could still be heard, but they adjusted a potato with copper and iron wire of unknown diameter to the radio inputs. The Slovaks did not climb the clearings and stayed in the valleys near the plum tree. In Austria, wives planted geraniums in transceivers. The Germans stayed in the church. Only the Hungarians remained, Slovenians, Croats. The results list in OK was halved.
What was the cause of this??
There is nothing you can do about the weather and conditions. They are like that, what they are. The deafness of the Italians can be traced to the burgeoning Alpe Adra Contest, but it is interesting, that Croats do not suffer from it. In Austria, the trend of retreat from VKV has been visible for a long time. It's more complicated in OK, it can't just be blamed on the weather. The first blow to the participation was given by the exclusion of the race from the Championship. The subsequent bribe with the permission to power the equipment from the mains did not prevent the outflow of large clubs, which are used to the screeching of turbines and the splash of discharges in the final stages. For them, QRP is below par and they used to participate in the race as a necessity. And the last blow of extending the race to the pointless 24 hours. After trying the new propositions, it became clear, that the road does not lead here, that it's just a waste of time show. It's interesting, that the decision to extend from 6 hours to 24 hours passed within a minute, while a return to the original value is not possible for years. It threatened, that due to the lack of interest of the competitors, the deadline will lapse and will be replaced by another QRO race. Therefore, at the request of the VKV community, the Classic QRP race was announced, maintaining the previously valid propositions with only minimal modifications. It is obvious from a long-term comparison of the results sheets, that 24 only a few individuals participate in the hour-long QRP race, while most race the shorter six-hour and send logs to both. The decision to re-declare a short race turns out to be the right one.
I was quite sad about this year's race discussion. There was a desire to create an LP category like Field Day, because with 10 Watty makes a bad call. The people in question somehow didn't understand, that a different strategy must be chosen, that it is not a system to beat in all directions with a full gay and he will be caught. Another wanted an eight-hour race, and because he was outvoted, so he drove out at the same time 400 watty. Must deliver, that no one complained about him. But the club station from Roztok was interfering, it clicked loudly on the radio. Performance 500 watts, what to add. I don't think so, that such behavior could be considered decent. Of course, it cannot be banned, but it's selfish to say the least. Karel OK2ZI commented in the discussion, that nothing can be done about it. I would say, that he can. A fatwa could be declared against unscrupulous stations and simply not connected to them during future races. Those 100-150 of points in the diary is a imperceptible decrease, but at the relevant station it will do it easily 7000 points! And that is already known, it hurts.
This year's event pleased the participants. Nice warm weather caressed, when good propagation conditions were added, so nothing was missing for a good experience. It was reflected in the number of stations on the band, although it still falls far short of what it was years ago.
The Italians were still in the sign of the grouse with headphones. The Austrians were awakened by the sun from their sleep of several years, and many of them were on the beach, somewhat reinforced by teams from OK nestled in the Alps. Signals from YU were popping up in the southeast, 9A, S5, This is the best score of a station in a given area in a given category, T7. LZ was made only by brothers from OM. The French were pushed by their race, so there were also a few to do with nice signals. One even came to our challenge. The Germans also appeared, but mainly for people from Pilsen and West Bohemia in general. Because the year-old BBT Contest is going on at the same time, so I expected a lot of stations from Bavaria, but it was no glory. PA and ON were also reserved for West Bohemia, like the cherry on the G0KPW cream sundae. Perun politely waited for the end of the race, he rattled the pack along a bit before opening fire with full volleys.
This year there were questions about how to evaluate and solve various situations. I will describe it briefly. If I get a diary from the station, so it's cool:
[REG1TEST;1]
TName=
TDate=20090802;20090803
PCall=OM3EE
PWWLo=JN88RF
PExch=
PAdr1=Senec
PAdr2=
PSect=Single
PBand=144 MHz
PClub=
So I know, that OM3EE worked from JN88RF and anything else is wrong.
I don't have the OE8GVK/3 diary, but then again I can get around it another way:
OE8GVF/3
33x OE8GVK/3
OE8GVK/3P
OE8GVK/P
7x OE8GVK/P3
OE8GWK/3
Statistics just work here. 33x OE8GVK/3, 1x OE8GVF/3, OE8GWK/3, OE8GVK/p. OE8GVK/3P is an obvious typo, fixed the mark, but did not delete the old data. Seven hams ran into Rakušák's marking …portable three.
When there is too little data to make a decision
IQ3ED/3
IQ3ED/P
IQ3ED/P
so I try to find help on the web, dxcluster, I send emails to questionable stations like last year: Hello dear OM, regarding your doubt we confirm that during the Alpe Adria Contest on the 3 th august, we used only IQ3ED/P. …….
Thanks to Kurt IN3DOV, the brand is clear and an educated decision can be made.
If I don't get a guaranteed response, so I will leave both variants as correct, as it happened in the above case.
I also include unique connections, but I try to verify them in any way I can:
| 090802 | 1041 | OK1UU/P | 59 17 | 59 1 | JN69PE |
I just called Honzo.
I proceed in the same way with locators. Connection numbers are more complicated, unless I have a diary from both stations. It is possible to reconstruct the journal of the counter station, OK1IF described it nicely on his website. In theory, the numbers should follow each other as time goes by, taking into account the possible tolerance. No number may be repeated.
When I get a sequence of numbers
001
002
003
004
005
017
008
and i see, that 15. he made the connection half an hour later, so the number is wrong 17.
I don't rule it out, that I too will manage to make a mistake, but I try to limit them as much as possible. I invite competitors from OM (and not only them) for the next edition of the Classic QRP race. The race is open, everyone will be evaluated, who's interested, will send a diary and follow the race's provisions.
Mirek OK1DOM
