J,
First no, there is no reason to flame you on this one. You have a
legitimate concern here.
Next, from an historical presence, let's remember that the section
designations on Sweepstakes are purely an ARRL convention -- CARF had
nothing to do with it, it goes back to the old ARRL Canadian Division, which
later became the CRRL before merging with CARF into what is now RAC (and
thus inheriting the A/CRRL section names). Point is, it's always been
ARRL's call as to what to officially call the sections.
Now: what your situation boils down to, if I understand it correctly, is
that there are three Canadian Territories -- Yukon Territory, Northwest
Territory, and NU (I'm not even going to try and insult anyone by butchering
that spelling). But for the administrative purposes of the contest & the
RAC, they are all part of the Northwest Territory SECTION. Therefore, it
appears that your request is that the ARRL contest robot recognize as
identifiers the individual territories that make up the section. Is this
unreasonable?
Yes.
The initial confusion is occuring because the name of the Section is the
same name as the original Territory, of which the other two were separated
for administrative purposes by Canada (which is beyond the scope of this
discussion).
Now I understand and sympathize with your argument that since the vast
majority of activity out of the NWT Section over the last dozen plus years
has come out of Yukon Territory, you naturally prefer to identify by your
Territory, not your Section. But that's not the way the rules read.
(Otherwise, we'd have to start recognizing the Maritime Provinces separately
instead of as the Maritime Section, and ditto for Labrador & Newfoundland,
just to be fair... right?)
So the robot is not incorrect, technically, in rejecting your Section as
YT -- that's not the name of the section.
The unofficial acceptance of YT in the past was just that -- unofficial.
And as more and more automation is coming into play, it's not a surprise
that unofficial little exceptions like this are falling by the wayside. (It
also implies that your continued use of YT instead of NWT, while correctly
identifying your Territory but incorrectly ID'd your Section, is also in
technical violation of the rules. Fortunately, common sense to this point
has prevailed in this situation up in Newington to date, but it just takes
one anal-retentive stickler for the letter of the rules...)
What I would suggest, rather than fighting an uphill battle to have the
Territory name be substituted for the Section name, petition the RAC to
change the name of the NWT section to avoid the continued confusion between
the NWT Territory & NWT Section names. That should avoid the problem in the
future. And since VY1 remains the prefix for Yukon amateurs, you shouldn't
have any trouble attracting attention in the contests now or in the future
(you always have a huge pileup when I hear you!)
But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
73, ron wn3vaw
"You used up all the glue ON PURPOSE!"
In Memory of Shep K2ORS (SK) and 10:15 PM on WOR 710 AM
----- Original Message -----
From: "J. Allen" <jallen@internorth.com>
To: <cq-contest@contesting.com>
Organization: Eagle's Nest Enterprises
Subject: [CQ-Contest] More than misleading calls. De VY1JA
I may be flamed severely for this, but here goes....
The following sprang from Bruce's comments, but is not directly linked...
When Yukon was activated for contests about 12 years ago, there had been no
one representing the then "ARRL" / CARF section called NWT. Since I and my
friends like Bob, VY1MB, Frank, VY1AC, and the folks at Yukon Amateur Radio
Association, like its president, Ron, VY1RM, have been the ones who in the
most part activate this "section".
We did not and do not like having to send NWT as our section, ARRL was
approached back when CARF was our representative, and asked if we could
simply sign YT instead. We were told at the time that CARF had determined
what the section name was and when we began to work with CARF to get it
officially changed, ARRL gave unofficial permission to use YT.
That done, I personally wrote to as many of the contest logging software
writers as I knew requesting that the software accept YT as NWT. This
included TR, CT, NA, EQF and Writelog at the time. Be sure to thank them
for their help.
Time passed...
The last few times that I submitted my logs, the ROBOT refused to accept YT
as my sent section. I had to play the same old game of telling someone at
ARRL that it is my log of data as sent.
This year, the representatives in RAC, began working with suggestions for
our present Canadian national organization, aimed at requesting that ARRL
change the official designator for YT/NWT/NU. When things got serious, an
ARRL rep, suggested that the ARRL will do as it chooses.... the excuse of
CARF having the power and ARRL as powerless to make the change was suddenly
gone, and the stone wall appeared.
Here are a few of my personal thoughts on this issue:
WE, Yukon, not NWT have represented this section for the past 12 years.
There are many more active amateurs in Yukon than in NWT and NU combined.
We northerners receive the brunt of One-Way propagation, Auroras,
Geomagnetic disturbances, and have a location far enough away from most of
the sections to make the chances of being first nearly impossible from here.
There are few of us, and many times only one of us is on to handle all of
the pressure of representing this section.
When we requested change, we were met with acceptance by the contesting
community, and the software writers... all accept YT or "YUKON" as our
section. Why cannot the contest rules accommodate this? Why has it been
unofficial and now why is it ruffling rule coated feathers again?
In Bruce's letter, he pleaded with the op on the other end to change his
call, and he would not. I am a little less stubborn. I tell people to type
in YT and the software will change it to NWT.
Now, here is the kicker. I sent YT. Does that disqualify all of those
logged QSOs, and make all of those sweep cups lies?
If anyone is interested, I can post a short letter describing exactly what
we requested of ARRL and RAC, and why.
Regards,
J.,
VY1JA
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