[NLRS] RE: Rovermania Postmortum- response

[James Froemke]

Matt raises some good questions in his post on this subject. Specifically
that there may be a more efficient way to coordinate the rover calling
frequency(s) during a busy contest, especially from remote grids.

The suggestion of a common "regional rover calling frequency" would be a
good alternative to the common "default calling frequency" (i.e., 144.200)
where everyone seems to congregate.

I noticed in September that after CQing in vain on my designated rover
calling frequency I needed to QSY to the common default calling frequency
more then half of the time to attract any attention. What seems to work in
these situations is to CQ on a "common" calling frequency and then announce
that you're listening on your separate "running" frequency.
    - The benefits of this approach are that more stations are monitoring
for calls on a "common" rover calling frequency then on all of the separate
rover calling frequencies and the relatively weak rover CQs don't have to
compete with stronger fixed stations.
    - The downside of this approach is that you have to wait for any QSO in
progress to complete before you transmit your CQ and QSY request.

With Matt's suggested "regional" rover calling frequency you would eliminate
the waiting time for QSOs in progress (I hope) and many more stations would
be monitoring this "common" rover calling frequency. You would still need to
QSY to separate frequencies to "run" the QSO to avoid jumping onto other
QSOs in progress and not clog up the rover calling frequency.  So, following
this approach there would be:

    - A common designated "regional" calling frequency for rover only use.
QSOs would be discouraged on this frequency. Suggested protocol would be for
rovers to call CQ on this frequency and then announce that they are
listening on their "running" frequency and then immediately QSY to their
running frequency to listen for responses. All fixed stations could then
monitor the common "regional" rover calling frequency for any and all rovers
rather then try to scan multiple rover calling frequencies as we did this
year.

    - There would still be the need to CQ on the common default calling
frequency and announce that you're listening on your "running" frequency to
try to attract other fixed stations who don't get it.

    - There would still be a need for separate rover frequencies to be used
as your "running" frequency on the primary band (222 in the UHF contest and
144 in the VHF contests).


I hope that these discussions can lead to a more efficient way to operate
for both rovers and fixed stations during contests.

73, Jim
K0MHC/RV
EL96al