[MiQP-Mail] One week to go.

[Dirk Esterline]

Well I have my 40 meter dipole up and working great. Hope the band is  
working as well as my antenna. Hope to have the tower down tomorrow so I  
can reattach the driven element to my tribander. While I have things down,  
I think I will redo all the connections so I won't have to bring it back  
down again too soon.

I have been promoting the contest through our club newsletter and have  
invited anyone interested to come over and check out the MIQP. Not sure if  
I will be entering as a Single Op or Multi-op single transmitter. Depends  
on whether anyone shows up.

One commentary about the Multi-op single transmitter category. I see a  
true multi-operator single transmitter entry to include more than one  
serious operator either sharing time or working together to get the  
highest score possible. My idea for helping to promote the contest would  
be to take time from a serious contest effort to act as an elmer for  
someone who is interested in learning about contesting. My score is never  
that fantastic that it would make a difference whether I enter as S.O. or  
M.O. but some operators may not want to change to M.O.

It is all on the honor system of course but my suggestion is to allow  
people to submit their log as a single-operator if all they were doing was  
elmering and not using additional operators to up their score. You could  
even include in the rules that, in the notes of the submitted log, the  
operator include the name and call of any operators that they elmered and  
how many contacts each one made. You could impose a limit on the number of  
calls made by operators other than the control operator. If they surpass  
the limit, then they must submit their log as a M.O. instead of an S.O.  
Why not even give some bonus points for elmering other operators? A lot of  
amateurs hate contesting because it floods the bands on weekends when they  
want to do some casual operating. Why not show them how fun contesting can  
be?

73 and hope to work you all next Saturday. By the way, I will monitor the  
Petoskey area repeater 146.68 pl 110.9 for any of you mobiles that would  
like to say hello before the contest. It has great coverage even up into  
the UP.

kg8jk