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Re: [CQ-Contest] [NCCC] If it CWACs...it's Fun (was Have NCCC and PVRC r

To: k3fiv@arrl.net, cq-contest@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] [NCCC] If it CWACs...it's Fun (was Have NCCC and PVRC ruined SS?)
From: CATFISHTWO@aol.com
Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2013 17:30:33 -0500 (EST)
List-post: <cq-contest@contesting.com">mailto:cq-contest@contesting.com>
A great collection of some solid ideas. I am only a modest contester my  
self, I usually look for my scores from the bottom up, not the top down, its  
faster:)  but yes, it needs to be fun for me to stay with it for any length  
of time. I am all for helping the club, but my body does not always  
cooperate..!  but you hit the nail on the head. excellent  observations.  tom 
N6AJR
 
 
In a message dated 2/3/2013 1:20:45 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
k3fiv@arrl.net writes:

Fascinating discussion.  As I recall, this started out as a  request to
hear people's thoughts, and I've been thinking about it for a  while so
I'll toss my two cents in.  Full disclosure -- I've been in  NCCC for a
few years now, but my early ham days in the 60s were in PVRC  territory
(I became K3FIV, actually KN3FIV, in 1963 in EPA), so I  have
experienced a bit of both worlds.  I'm also just a little pistol  - 100
watts and a dipole; I've found that I enjoy using a modern station  but
similar to what I had back in the 60s.   Maybe I have the QRP  gene.
Anyway, I guess I enjoy contesting, SSB, CW, RTTY, whatever, but  I'm
not a "serious contester".  I'm just fodder for the big-rate big  guns.

Please take what I say as constructive criticism.   I  know I'm wrong,
I just don't know why.  You'll probably tell  me.

I probably won't be revealing any state secrets to recall some  NCCC
email discussions prior to the last SS.  It seemed that a lot  of
people were tired of SS.  It just wasn't worth the effort.  It  was
unfair for us West Coast stations.   It was too long for  aging bodies
to endure and be competitive.  Whether or not such things  are true, if
people think that they're true, it takes away some of the Fun  of a
contest.  From any or all of such reasons, the club decided not  to
focus on SS 2012.  There were sighs of relief, as people were  freed
from the yoke of facing another painful SS experience.

Since  other people noticed a difference after the contest, we could
conclude that  fewer West Coasters participated, or at least spent
fewer hours on the air  compared to earlier years.   Without the
incentive and pressure  of being a club "focus", activity from NCCC in
the SS 2012 "experiment"  apparently dropped enough to be noticed.

IMHO, we can learn a few  things from this experiment.  i think the
major lesson is that people  participate in contests because it's Fun -
more Fun than something else  they might do that day.  Many people just
enjoy using their ham radio  equipment, since contests bring the bands
alive with other stations to  work.  They don't expect to "win" in any
way, but it's fun just to use  the radio.  It's Fun.  I suspect the
majority of stations in  contests are in this category, especially the
ones who don't even submit a  log.

Die-hard contesters will participate no matter what. But many  people
participate because they have at least some hope of winning in  some
way.  It might be placing in the top ten, or just simply doing  better
than they did last year.  Again, to them it's  Fun.

Contesters with little hope of any personal victory can help  their
club to a victory, by contributing their scores to the club  aggregate.
That's Fun too.

If you experience enough Fun out of any  or all of these reasons for
participating, you're likely to  participate.  If not, you'll probably
go watch a ball game instead -  it's more Fun for you.  Without the
"Club Fun" for NCCC members in SS  2012, there was apparently a lot
more ball game Fun that weekend - enough  for others to notice.

I think the lesson here, primarily for the  contest organizers, is that
the Fun contained in the SS contest itself may  have deteriorated.   SS
needs an extra push from clubs to  convince their members to
participate when they'd rather be doing something  else that's more
Fun.  Perhaps that may be something the Contest  Committee would like
to address.

------

Fast forward to  February 2013.

There's another experiment now in progress but possibly  not very
visible except to some club members.   Forgive me if I  don't have all
the details right...  NCCC challenged other large clubs  to a grand
NAQP battle - kind of a "meet me in the alley" unsanctioned  fray, but
the "alley" is the three NAQP battles - CW, SSB, and  RTTY.   PVRC and
SMC accepted, and these three clubs are now in  ongoing combat, with
the final RTTY round later this month.

There's  an interesting quirk in this NAQP experiment.  Club scores for
the  battle will be computed (by the clubs, not the NAQP sponsor) by
adding all  of the members' individual scores, as you might expect.
But, the clubs  wanted to encourage participation, and encourage
members to try new  modes.  So, ... each club's score will be
multiplied by the number of  club members who make at least 1 QSO in
that particular battle.  This  "multiplier" has had an interesting
effect in the SS and CW battles which  already occurred.  Judging by
the whining on email, quite a few  diehard CW contesters managed to
find their microphones and make at least  one SSB contact. and
similarly the SSB guys overcame unimaginable obstacles  to get a CW Q
in their logs.  In fact I suspect most of them did a lot  more than 1
Q.  If you get on for NAQP RTTY on the 23rd, you may hear  some rather
familiar contest callsigns struggling with RTTY Qs -- if they  can get
the station sorted out and working by then to make at least 1  Q.   I
bet they'll make more.

The experiment is still in  progress, but it seems everyone's having
Fun, and there's more activity so  other participants are probably
having more Fun too.  I don't think  anyone has an idea which club will
win - and that's Fun too.

A  lesson to be learned from this experiment - it's possible to design
a  "Contest Within A Contest" (CWAC) to create both more Fun for the
clubs and  more participation, which leads to more Fun for everyone.
This can be done  without changing the existing rules.  It's possible
to introduce a new  or different aspect in such a CWAC, e.g.,
increasing participation, by  defining the CWAC's own scoring rules
appropriately.

Existing  contests' rules can be mentally split into two categories.
The basic rules  are ones which affect the Qs themselves - e.g., the
exchange, or what  constitutes a "dupe".  A rule such as "work any
station only once"  fits this category.   In a CWAC, you have to live
within such  rules;  if you do, other participants in the contest won't
notice the  difference on the air -- as is happening now in NAQP.

The second  category of rules includes the ones which define scoring,
i.e., how you  compute the score of a log.   Number of points per  Q,
multipliers, etc., fall into this category.  In general, a CWAC  has
pretty broad latitude to define it's own scoring rules  without
affecting regular participants in the contest -- as the  NCCC/PVRC/SMC
NAQP experiment is doing.

All of this can be done  without the need to change any existing
contest rules, as the NAQP  experiment demonstrates.   It's all under
control of the clubs  who decide to "throw down the gauntlet" and name
the venue and rules for  their grand shootout.  They can simply all
submit their logs to each  other for validation.  Or maybe they just
trust each other to compute  their own results.

-----

SS 2013?

With the SS 2012 and  NAQP Battle experiments mostly behind us, I'd
encourage clubs to  collaborate and define one or more CWACs to be held
during SS 2013, along  the lines of what was done for the current NAQP.
Basic contest rules, the  ones that affect QSOs themselves, would be
off-limits, so that the  traditional "base" contest isn't disrupted.
But scoring rules for a CWAC  could be created as desired by the clubs
involved to support the interests  and goals of the clubs who want to
do battle with each other.   Traditional SS participants should notice
nothing other than hopefully  increased activity, which should be Fun
for everyone.

No existing  contest rules need to be changed at all.  It's up to the
clubs  involved to define what they consider to be enough Fun to accept
the  challenge of a CWAC.   We seem to argue a lot about all  the
problems with existing contest rules and the undesirability  or
difficulty of changing them.  We can't all agree.  But we  don't have
to.

Perhaps NCCC, PVRC, and SMC will relish a SS CWAC as  a rematch of the
NAQP fray?   Perhaps others will join, or form  their own
battlegrounds?

Proposals...?

There's been some good  ideas floating around.  I particularly like the
"gridsquare" club  boundary.  I'd like to toss two ideas into the
hopper for  consideration in defining a CWAC, for SS2013 and other
contests.  Both  are intended to increase participation and therefore
Fun for  everyone.

---

First, the every-club-member-is-a-multiplier in  the NAQP battle is an
interesting scoring rule - we'll see what happens  with that after that
last round of RTTY.

Another similar  "multiplier" scoring rule could be that each club
member gets a multiplier  for each member of a different competing club
that they work.    On the surface, this might look like a wash.  If an
NCCCer works a  PVRCer, each club gets a multiplier so there's no  real
effect.

However, there are many members of a club who have less  than
superstations, and who can therefore be expected to have  weaker
signals into the other clubs' territories.  To get such  stations as
multipliers, the other club would have to be good at pulling  out weak
signals, and at finding such stations who might only be on the air  for
a short time.  Thus this rule would encourage working weaker  stations,
who probably haven't been spotted, and therefore test a club's  radio
skills at such tasks.  It would also make more Fun for those  little
pistols, and encourage more participation.

In a two-club  CWAC, this might end up being a wash in the scoring.
But in a three-club  battle, it becomes more interesting -- e.g., if
PVRC and NCCC don't work  each other much, but SMC works a lot of both
PVRC and NCCC, SMC would get a  lot more multipliers from exercise of
that weak-signal skill than NCCC or  PVRC.  Which club has better radio
skills for finding and working weak  signals?

Whether this would be "fair" or not is to be seen.  But  it would be
different, and that should be Fun.   Do you go for  Rate, and just work
the strongest as they come to you?  Or do you seek  out the weaker
stations, searching for more multipliers, who probably  haven't even
been spotted at all?   Even devising the Strategy  can be Fun.

This kind of multiplier effect should be especially good at  increasing
Fun for the masses of ordinary stations who never have much hope  of
winning anything by themselves.  But they can have a  noticeable
contribution to their Club score - more Fun should encourage  more
participation.  Of course, I'm biased -- my little station is  usually
barely a blip in the NCCC scores.  But there's lots of  stations like
mine, and encouraging those operators to participate should  be Fun for
everyone.

---

So, here's a second suggestion for  increasing participation,
especially from people who wouldn't normally  participate at all.
Let's get more newbies into contesting by making it  easier for them to
get started with a good experience so they get  hooked.  Yes,
contesting is addictive...

To do this, we  encourage clubs to have their members "elmer" one or
more non-contesters to  try out contesting, or for existing contesters
to try out a new mode, by  being able to use a decent contest station
that is already set up and ready  to go.  The setup of a contest
station, including radio, computers,  software, etc., can be a little
daunting for newbies, especially in complex  environments like RTTY.
It doesn't have to be a superstation for a newbie  to have Fun.
Probably better if it's not.

An "Elmering Station" is  simply a contest station which will be shared
by a number of contesters in  turn over the contest period.  Each will
use his or her own callsign  for a few hours.  This will not only give
them the feel of having  their own station, but also give each the
opportunity for a realistic  contest experience of what they might do
at home.  Newbies like to  work the easy strong stations first (the
ones who sit on the same frequency  for hours - you know who you are).
By using their own callsign (only one  callsign per person) Elmering
Stations will be available for Qs whenever  their turn at the console
occurs, unlike "multi-op" scenarios where the  easy Qs were likely all
made by the first op at the multi-op station early  in the contest.
Each club might want to set up one or more such  stations.  Perhaps a
Serious Contester whose Fun now runs out after 10  hours BIC can enjoy
seeing some newbies use his equipment. In addition to  facilitating
elmering newbies, it could provide a way for experienced  contesters
with time limitations, or HOA constraints, to spend a few hours  having
Fun.

The only effect an Elmering Station should have on the  traditional
contesting participants would be the appearance of lots more  callsigns
to be worked.  That increased activity should make  especially the
late-contest period more Fun for everyone.  More  participation in this
contest, hopefully leading to even more participation  in the future.

Such "Elmering" behavior is unfortunately outlawed by  ARRL General
Rule 3.5, so any station used for Elmering would be able to  submit
only a Checklog for the SS competition itself.   Since  they probably
have no expectation of winning anything, it's probably not a  big deal.
I think the same would be true of the "GridSquare Club  Boundary"
rule.   But the clubs defining a CWAC could choose to  accept such
entrants and count their scores toward the club's results in  the CWAC.

-------------

Well, there's lots more such  experimenting that's possible, to create
more Fun for everyone without even   changing any contest rules.
Perhaps some experiments in CWACs will prove  worthy to be incorporated
into the base contest rules.  That's up to  the decisions of the
contest committees.  The CWACs however are only  up to the decisions of
the clubs involved.

Hopefully we'll figure  out how to have more Fun.  Now, time to go --
there's another big  NCCC/PVRC battle brewing, and this one's even on
national TV.    It's the NCCC Niners against the PVRC Ravens.

If you've gotten this  far, you must be a Contester!  Thanks for listening!

73,
/Jack  de K3FIV
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