I don't know Rich if this is exactly correct your remarks "those who won
then (under a traditional system) would continue to have won under
distance based format." How do we know this? Before we have others
leaping on to grand sweeping fallacy let me at least prove this is
false. Just compare two contests on the same band, i.e., the ARRL 160
Meter contest and the Stew Perry Top Band Distance Challenge. Rule are
slanted against the Caribbean Territories so they could never win or
even make the top ten, period. In comparison the Stew Perry TBDC gives
some equity to stations off shore at some distance away. Stations in
South America, and the Caribbean fighting through the tropical QRN can
make a good show. I've ask this question again and again without any
answer from those nabobs at the ARRL Contest regime: Why do you allow a
contest like the ARRL 160 to exist when a station in the U.S. Virgin
Islands can never win wherein a station in the British Virgin, a few
miles away, could easily win with any good effort? They are most
noticeably silent on that. I am not sure but VP2VI was President of the
ARRL when the rules were set up. However, To Bob's credit at first it
was going to be a Sweepstakes for 160 but amid his protests they
included DX but deliberately or not did not include the American
Territories as DX. This was and ivy covered New England way of doing
things for those close to and in with those at HQ and their cronies to
enjoy. Decades on attempts have resulted in statements from the CAC
that they can only consider things they are "tasked" to do by insiders.
These insiders are not contest people at all but those who work in
Newington. There is more to this story but I will spare you because
perhaps you already know it.
Herb Schoenbohm, KV4FZ
On 11/10/2015 12:32 PM, Richard F DiDonna NN3W wrote:
I believe that at some point in the past, someone did an analysis of
what would happen to a past contest if the scoring metric was changed
from the current scoring format (I believe it was a CQWW contest, but
it may have been an ARRL DX test) to a distance based scoring metric.
IIRC, for the most part, those who won then (under a traditional
system) would continue to have won under distance based format. One
or two "out of the blue" entrants cracked the "box", but the winners
were still, by and large, the winners.
Now, that is hindsight, and behaviors change based upon the rules, but
I have to agree with Kelly, that if you can't work/hear the DX in the
first place, you are only going to gain so many points when the
marginal band or path does open.
73 Rich NN3W
On 11/10/2015 10:23 AM, Kelly Taylor wrote:
Hello Jim,
First off, let me assure you I have the greatest respect for your
technical prowess and appreciate all your efforts to help anyone who
asks.
However, I respectfully disagree on the merits of distance-based
scoring.
How does distance-based scoring do anything other than swap one
unlevel playing field for another?
Consider:
It’s 7 a.m. Sunday morning and K5ZD is running 3,500-mile QSOs into
Europe at 200/hr when you can’t even tell Europe is on the band? You
get more per Q when Europe finally opens to the Bay Area, but are you
going to work them at the same rate?
It’s at virtually any time during the contest and P40V is cranking
through 300/hr with 5,000-mile distant Europeans and 10,000-mile
distant Asians, Oceanics and VU2s. All of whom are as loud to him as
W6YX is to you.
It’s late Saturday night and you’re on 80. As you tune across the
band from your Winnipeg location, you hear K5ZD, NQ4I, P40V, and a
hundred other stations working, at high rate, stations you can’t even
tell are on the band. So you plug away at working Americans, knowing
your QSOs are worth half the distance or less. If you’re lucky,
you’ll beat the pileup of Europeans you can’t hear and work the odd
Aruba-Bonaire-Curaçao station.
The fallacy of distance-based scoring is it begins with the
supposition everybody has access to the same distant stations, or
would, if they had a big enough station. But that’s just not true.
There’s a reason the Black Hole is called the place RF goes to die.
And even when we can work Europe, we rarely drill down more than the
first couple of layers. On 80 and 40, we’re pretty much limited to
the odd superstation.
In the U.S., the Northeastern stations will always have more access
to more Europeans than you have access to PacRim stations. For those
in the centre of the continent, stations around the perimeter
(K1,2,3,4,5,6,7, VE1, 9, VY2 and VO1) will always have access to
greater-distance Qs, often with stations barely, if at all, audible
to you. And stations such as P40V and HC8N will always have more
access to EVERYBODY than you or I could ever hope to have.
The reason a VE4 log in WW is predominantly American is that, while
each QSO is fewer points, at least it’s someone...
In the end, WW results wouldn’t change much, if at all, under
distance-based scoring.
The scoring model for the Stew Perry is interesting, but it doesn’t
help many stations in the least.
In VE4 we accept our lot and still try to have as much FUN as we can.
We don’t predicate fun on winning. Because it says here if a VE4 ever
wins WW, it will only be because massive tectonic activity turned
Winnipeg into an oceanside community.
73, kelly
ve4xt
On Nov 10, 2015, at 12:42 AM, Jim Brown <k9yc@audiosystemsgroup.com>
wrote:
On Mon,11/9/2015 8:13 AM, Ron Notarius W3WN wrote:
If I'm not mistaken, the basic argument is that a station in
"continental" South America, all else being equal, will always
"lose" to a station in the "offshore/island" Caribbean station
located within the SA continental boundaries.
The fundamental problem is that the guys in PY, LU, CX, and CE have
the same competitive disadvantage by virtue of their location with
respect to population centers as do we on the west coast of the USA,
and those in VK/ZL, and in much of AS.
A contest scoring system based entirely on arbitrary (and very
simplistic) rules like countries and continents, paying no attention
to distance or geography, leaves out a LOT of hams that would like
to compete but cannot. Such rules are DUMB in today's world -- they
were designed half a century ago by those who lived in the "real,"
"civilized" parts of NA, and were simple enough that scores could be
computed by simple multiplication of numbers on a piece of paper.
N6TR came up with a FAR better scoring system for the Stew Perry
contests -- it was so good that ARRL wanted to adopt it, but as I
heard it, Tree didn't want to lose control of it so that someone
could screw it up. I don't blame him a bit. Tree's system is simple
enough that the distance-based score for each QSO is computed by the
logging sofware and displayed in the log. The only thing the logger
can't do is give bonus credit for the TX power of the station you
worked -- that's done in log checking. And Tree's system is far from
the only one that could make sense, and that could easily be scored
in real time by modern logging software on almost any shack computer.
Unless or until the contesting "powers" that love the rules because
the rules favor them wakes up and decides that the rest of us
deserve to be competitive, those of us outside those favored
population centers are going to vote with our feet and not take
these contests seriously. Those with bucks will continue to travel
to islands where they have a better shot at winning, and to build
contesting stations in ME and VY2 so that they can be closer to the
mults in EU.
THAT'S why there's so little activity from so many countries in so
many of these contests, which makes it much less fun for the rest of
us because we run out of stations to work.
73, Jim K9YC
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