I haven't received my NCJ yet, but increasing the proportion of daylight hours will
further increase the advantage of western or Carribean (or VY2) stations because of the
skip zones on the high bands. Most eastern "tribander" stations actually make
most of their Sweepstakes contacts with low 40m or 80m dipoles. I think such a change
would make it even less popular to eastern stations.
Tor
N4OGW
--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 3/13/18, Ken Widelitz <kwidelitz@gmail.com> wrote:
Subject: [CQ-Contest] NCJ Article RE: Sweepstakes Change Suggestions
To: cq-contest@contesting.com
Date: Tuesday, March 13, 2018, 5:48 PM
The March/April 2018 NCJ has an article by
Al, K0AD and Bill, W0OR
suggesting changes to Sweepstakes.
Al suggests moving the start time up 4
hours. This makes a lot of sense to
me. More daylight hours so guys with a
tribander will make more contacts.
Also, perhaps more importantly, East
Coast SSers won't have to stay up late
Sunday night suffering the doldrums and
more will probably operate later on
Sunday.
Bill suggests shortening the contest to
18 hours. I like that idea but would
suggest shortening it to 20 hours. Bill
also suggests a forced off time in
the middle which doesn't appeal to me
personally. His last suggestion is to
allow duplicate QSOs on 10 and 160
meters. I don't like that at all as it
makes guys without good 160m antennas
uncompetitive. As to 10 meters in down
sunspot cycle years, it will only help
where there is the occasional
spotlight propagation and give an
unfair advantage there.
Moving up the start time and decreasing
overall operating time should have a
positive effect on this contest. Of
course, getting the NCCC, PVRC and YCCC
to have a yearly major focus on winning
the overall gavel is what will help
the most. A few years ago when they did
that there were no doldrums Sunday.
Let the flames begin, and apologies in
advance to our international list
members who don't give a hoot about
SS.
73, Ken, K6LA / VY2TT
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