"But what about the thousands of little guys you big guns want to work, who
can't afford to rent a station and fly there? Don't they get to have fun
too?"
Yes, they do. That is what ham ingenuity and friendships are all about.
Those little (and not so little) guys may not get the massive Eu runs from
the east ... but they can.
Yes, we have commercial companies that will rent you a station. However,
look at all the contest stations that sit idle for many events.
Or, the M/M's that can't staff up due to lack of operators. Everyone has
something to offer (operator skill, technical expertise) to other contest
station owners in lieu of dollars. Make friends. Do Remote!!
For less than a grand (or less than $300 if you own a K3), you can get the
gear to remote into another station -- perhaps one on a different coast.
Experience what it is like without spending a fortune.
I started the remote project for VY1AAA for two reasons: to help out a
friend who needed help with his station, and because I wanted to experience
the challenge of operating from a tough spot... and to give out the mult.
I did not want to fly there. It's been a lot of fun. I'd love to operate
AA or some other contest from the west -- to get a sense for it.
This is all possible now -- and it's not an economic problem.
We can cry all day about rules -- I don't see them changing significantly
in any reasonable period of time in terms of geography. Changes for
geography sake always have unintended consequences.
73, Gerry W1VE
On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 11:43 PM, Jim Brown <k9yc@audiosystemsgroup.com>
wrote:
> On Wed,2/24/2016 6:26 PM, Ken Widelitz wrote:
>
>> Of course the West coast isn't going to come close to the East coast in a
>> DX contest.
>>
>
> That depends ENTIRELY on scoring rules. We has hams have gotten used to
> the definition of a DX contest as one where number of contacts is
> multiplied by number of multipliers, and the ONLY multipliers are
> countries. Simple scoring rules of that sort made sense when the only
> computers available to us were pencil and paper doing simple addition and
> multiplication.
>
> But those simple-minded rules make NO SENSE today, thanks to wide
> disparities in the geographical distribution of hams, the geographical
> distribution and size of countries, and the VERY different propagation
> conditions between hams in various parts of the world and those population
> centers. Modern computers make practical the computation of all sorts of
> distance-based scoring rules, or of definitions of multipliers other than a
> "country."
>
> For all practical purposes in contests, Asia rarely provides more than a
> dozen or so countries, OC rarely more than a half dozen, and the distance
> to those countries from W6/W7 is significantly greater than from the
> eastern seaboard to EU and AF. The only significant activity in AS and OC
> is JA.
>
> How would you like it if the European Union was a single multiplier?
> That's our condition with China (much of a continent), VK (an entire
> continent), Russia (much of two continents), and Japan (often 40% of the Qs
> in a west coast log).
>
> If we must insist on the concept of multipliers with no distances, I
> propose that JA prefectures be multipliers, along with states in VK and BY.
> That would be very easy to do -- they're already numbered. Oh -- but we
> can't do that, it would be different, and make it impossible to compare
> current scores with historical ones. BS -- spotting networks, Skimmer,
> automated messages, SO2R, automated dupe checking have already done that,
> in spades!
>
> The REAL reason for resistance to this sort of change is like with any
> other privileged group -- they don't want to give up their massive
> advantage! You (Ken) have the advantage of a very short hop to EU and
> bands that are open a lot more than for most others. Those with contest
> stations in the Caribbean have the continental multiplier in some contests,
> and a short water path to all the major ham population centers except JA.
>
> But what about the thousands of little guys you big guns want to work, who
> can't afford to rent a station and fly there? Don't they get to have fun
> too?
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
>
>
>
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