Jim,
Your reply indicates that you not read or understand my brief post before
commenting on it. And then you truncated it and ignored the rest in your
reply. I have put in bold parts of my post to emphasize what you overlooked:
”Umm... there is NO “advantage” for the East coast (especially New England)
contesters in SS compared to the Midwest, Great Plains, South, Southwest or
West. It’s actually the WORST place to be for that contest from a score
standpoint.
Any East coast advantages reside solely with DX contests.
I don’t know what rule changes K9YC is talking about. Perhaps he will
elaborate.”
--------------------------
While people can disagree over your assertion that W1 contesters in SS can more
easily work the Eastern Canada Mults 15 or 20 vs. a W6, (an assumption which
would be largely incorrect), any possible advantage to working TWO or THREE
more SS mults is far outweighed by the fact that the same op at a similar
station in W6 at a similar qth, can make another 500 – 800 q’s on SSB and
several hundred more on CW vs. a similar station in W1. How you can think that
is a W1 advantage in SS advantage vs W6 from a score standpoint, defies belief.
Simple arithmetic easily proves my point.
I happen to know something about operating SS Phone having made many serious
SOAB efforts from W1 and W2. And, while I have not operated from W6 for SS, I
have made serious SOAB efforts in SS Phone from both Colorado and Western
Washington, placing near the top of the US both times with tribander and wire
stations, something that is impossible from W1 regardless of propagation. It
is a hell of a lot more fun to operate from ANYWHERE in the West than W1 in SS!
And it is a heck of a lot easier to work the Eastern Canadian provinces from
the West as well!
Now, I also CLEARLY stated the well-known East coast advantage in DX contests,
which you did not even acknowledge, instead lecturing me on how unfair it is
for A W6 vs. a W1 in the 160 M contest. Of course East stations can work loads
more EU than W6 on 160. How would it be otherwise? The East Coast, and
especially W1 views the 160 M contests as DX contests, even though we work
typically work about about 5x as many stateside as DX stations. But what the
heck does that have to do with SS?
As far as your contention that it is pointless to call anyone east of the
Mississippi before a certain time...., that’s all about the operator and
station, not about how many points a qso is worth. To a top-notch operator,
EVERY qso matters and the best operators want every single qso and they have
designed their stations so that they can hear in multiple directions
simultaneously. Some operators are just lazy and don’t want to “dig” for
stations, but that’s on them. Others have significant noise that can’t be
filtered out or they don’t have directional receiving antennas, but again, that
has nothing to do with points per qso, so that claim just doesn’t hold water.
I want to make every qso possible regardless of how long I operate. And, on
the rare occasions when I have a pileup on 160 and EU stations are calling, I
am also aware of who is NOT EU and I work them seconds later. Unless the
caller is incredibly impatient (and some are), they can work me easily if they
want to.
And then there was this comment of yours:
”Any changes to contest rules that increase the advantage of east coast
contesters seems to be OK with HQ!”
That’s a pretty accusatory statement, especially when you did not specify any
details about these alleged “rule changes” or when they supposedly occurred.
That made me curious as to what you were talking about, so I asked. But once
again you did not provide any specifics of these “rule changes” or when they
occurred, instead just complaining about the point differential of US vs DX
qso’s in the 160 M contests.
I happen to know something about the 160 M contests. In the late ‘80’s and
again in the late ‘90’s, I competed seriously in the ARRL160 and CQ160 DX
contests. I won the CQ160 and placed 2nd once. In the ARRL 160 I was in the
top 2 or 3, three times, and I remember the rules, strategy and point scoring.
I know that in 1986, the ARRL counted DX qso’s as 5 pts vs. 1 pt for US. So
this has NOT changed since at least 1986, 33 years ago. And similarly for the
CQ160, DX qso’s counted 10 pts each. This has not changed either. We have had
at least ** 8 ** Presidential elections since this point scoring ratio of DX to
US has changed in either 160 meter DX contest. So how many decades ago did the
rule change that so offended you? Your statement implies that there were far
more recent rule changes that fundamentally altered the competitive balance of
contests, and that simply isn’t true.
73
Bob KQ2M
From: Jim Brown
Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2020 1:04 PM
To: cq-contest@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] New Mult for SS
On 1/4/2020 7:45 AM, Bob Shohet, KQ2M wrote:
> I don’t know what rule changes K9YC is talking about. Perhaps he will
> elaborate.
Bob,
Perhaps you (and others who don't understand) should operate SS as a
guest from W6. AND SS is not the only contest with RAC sections as
mults. There's ARRL 160, which the east coast views as a DX contest
working EU, and those of us west of the Rockies view as a NA contest,
where all the serious stations east of the Rockies are listening with
directional antennas pointing NE.
Contest rules are made by human beings, and the decision to use RAC and
ARRL sections is (was) an arbitrary one that may have made sense nearly
a century ago, but doesn't necessarily now. That decision is a contest
scoring rule, and it defines how participants will choose to operate. So
is the decision to make countries multipliers, and there are roughly 5x
more multipliers available to those operating in the Atlantic basin than
to those west of the Rockies.
To clarify what I'm talking about, I have a pretty good 160M antenna
farm, and do my best in 160M contests. Over the past six seasons, I've
heard seven signals from EU and been able to work two of those stations,
all during the last CQ160 and this season's Stew. I have learned that
it's a waste of time to call big stations east of the Mississippi river
before an hour after EU sunrise. This happens because of scoring rules
that make a QSO with a country outside W/VE worth five times more than
one to W/VE.
And W6 does NOT have an SS advantage working deep into eastern Canada --
NorCal, where I live, gets a pretty narrow window early Sunday morning
on 15M where I can work these section IF they are on the air then (and
IF there's prop on 15M, which there hasn't been much of out here for a
few years). And as others have noted, propagation from PNW, NorCal, and
SoCal/SW Az can be very different from each other, just as FL and
Mid-Atlantic are different from each other and from ME/Maratime VE.
< snip>
73, Jim K9YC
_______________________________________________
CQ-Contest mailing list
CQ-Contest@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
|