Since next year there will be even more satellites up there, Linear and FM, maybe it is time to have ARRL eliminate the 100 point bonus and that will cause many of the folks just trying for that 100 points to just not try. That would take some of the load off the FM birds. I will still be there on the linear satellites even without the bonus.
From: Burns Fisher [email protected] Sent: Monday, June 25, 2018 7:09 PM To: Greg D [email protected] Cc: E.Mike McCardel [email protected]; AMSAT BB [email protected]; Tom Schuessler [email protected] Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] FM sats and FD
Excellent condensation of what we were saying Greg, not to mention the additional concept of a net control getting extra points, as well as the need for training.
Now--in a normal emergency net, a net control is pre-designated (I think). How do you think we could do that for FD while still being in the spirit of "practice for the real thing"? I have no good answer.
Good discussion!
Burns WB1FJ
On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 7:40 PM, Greg D <[email protected] mailto:[email protected] > wrote:
Tossing in my $.02 here, for what it's worth... TL:DR: it's not the rules, it the training that we need to fix.
From this chair, the issue isn't so much about the points as about getting the most number of successful contacts through during the 24hr FD window. The premise of the single-QSO rule for FM birds is that the single channel is a scarce resource, and we don't want any one op to hog it. Limiting the number of QSOs by any one operator gives more time for the rest. Nice in theory, but as we experience every year, this is ineffective in practice. I fact, I think it's possibly counter productive to the objective. Let me explain...
We see the effect all the time when checking into a net. Net control calls for checkins, and there's a roar of RF thrown at him/her from which some morsel of a callsign is extracted. Net control narrows the field down to that morsel, and the process repeats until a single whole call is extracted and logged, then on to the next person.
Now look at what happens if there is no net control. At the end of a contact, everyone throws their callsign out, but lacking a net control, there is no clear process for extracting and filtering callsign morsels to make a 2-way contact. Instead of trying to succeed making a 1-to-n connection, you're trying to create a winning pair out of an m-by-n zoo. Eventually timing (yes, a skill), luck, and big hammers (amplifiers) will result in one of those m-by-n pairings to succeed, but it will take time. If the rules are constructed to remove the winning participants after every successful contact, you are forcing that m-by-n chaos to repeat for every contact. I submit that this is nuts, given the limited time a satellite is within view, the limited bandwidth (especially for FM birds), and with the limited number of them that we have.
Rather, I think it would be better to encourage through the points system and through documentation and training to let a net control role naturally emerge. The net control station gets some small additional benefit for ascending to this role by the additional QSOs completed, and the overall rate of QSOs completed goes up because you're back to a 1-to-n process, so everyone wins in the end. The process also helps develop the operator skills of the net control role, just as it does when a station on HF "holds" a frequency for a while during a contest. If the station can't hold the frequency, due to technique, equipment, or the loss of propagation at end of a pass, net control will naturally pass to the next operator with the skill and equipment to take on that role.
The current ARRL rules giving 100 points for the first contact, and 1 point for each contact beyond that, are aligned with this strategy, though I think that adjustments can be made to make it even better. The single QSO rule needs to be removed, and in its place should be a set of guidelines (training) for good behavior. These include the acknowledgment of the net control role, and the documenting of the inefficiency that results when there is a power struggle for net control. In this regard, I think that lowering the prize for additional contacts to 1 point for every two contacts might be better. We don't want the role to be so juicy that everyone fights for it; better for some to take that 100 points for the first contact as a check-in, and go somewhere else for the incremental ones.
Bottom line, EMike and others are on the right path with the net control role, but we're missing the training aspect showing why it's a good idea, and how to behave when you're net control, or just trying to check in.
Thoughts?
Greg KO6TH