CQ-Contest
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Re: [CQ-Contest] Contest within a contest

To: <cq-contest@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Contest within a contest
From: "Bob Shohet, KQ2M" <kq2m@kq2m.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2020 18:44:22 -0400
List-post: <mailto:cq-contest@contesting.com>
Over the years, I have found that the greatest variability in path utility 
comes not from the distance involved, but rather how much of that path passes 
through the Northern auroral zone.

When geomagnetic cndx are quiet (A = 2 or less, K = 0)  VE6JY and KL7RA can run 
EU stations at EU sunrise on bands where I can’t even hear them.    But when 
cndx are disturbed ( A > 35 K > 4) they are in a “black hole” and I can still 
work some EU (though with difficulty), but the Southern W5’s  own the band.  
And while K0SR might be equidistant from Europe compared to a Southern W5, his 
path certainly isn’t equivalent.

There will always be inequities in contest scoring and distance scoring is one 
way of addressing them, but I think that points scoring based on auroral path 
characteristics combined with distance might potentially be the fairest of all. 

73

Bob KQ2M


From: Denis Pochuev K7GK 
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2020 5:39 PM
To: cq-contest@contesting.com 
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Contest within a contest

Tor,

Yes, inequities within the zones are a problem. I'm quite familiar with it, 
though in a different context, having contested from the Pacific Northwest and 
the Bay Area, both at the western edge of Zone 3. You simply cannot compete 
with Arizona from any of those locations in a DX contest.

The main motivations for the scheme I proposed are the overlooked inequities in 
distance-based scoring. Those are glaring. For instance, let's take Vienna as 
the proxy for Europe, roughly in its geographical center, even though such 
center is somewhere near the Slovak-Ukrainian border. Seattle, Dallas and Miami 
are roughly equidistant from Vienna, using the great circle distance as the 
measure. I think it's pretty obvious that the difficulty of a contact for those 
3 paths varies greatly, pretty much regardless of the band.

One cannot assume that distance-based scoring will make things fair. It will 
simply will replace one set of inequities with another.

Denis - K7GK/6

________________________________
From: CQ-Contest <cq-contest-bounces+k7gk=hotmail.com@contesting.com> on behalf 
of RT Clay <rt_clay@bellsouth.net>
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2020 8:50 AM
To: cq-contest@contesting.com <cq-contest@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Contest within a contest

Denis,

I think your scoring scheme has a critical flaw:  the points for each qso 
depend on basically arbitrary zone boundaries, and the zone boundaries in some 
cases divide up countries with lots of entries (like the USA). For example, a 
station on the western edge of zone 5 would get 3 points for working Europe in 
zone 14. A station one mile away in the eastern part of zone 4 gets 4 points 
for the same contact.

The IARU contest also has this problem because of the 1 point/3 points for 
same/different zones. I live in western zone 8 close to zone 7. There are many 
more zone 8 stations active than zone 7 stations in IARU. If I was just a 
little further west my score would go up significantly.

Tor N4OGW

On Sunday, March 15, 2020, 9:13:56 PM CDT, Denis Pochuev K7GK 
<k7gk@hotmail.com> wrote:

I have outlined an alternative scoring proposal for CQWW quite some time ago in 
our club's newsletter. It is mostly distance-based and doesn't require any 
changes to the exchange or additional grid square information.

Details are here (pages 13-17): http://nccc.cc/jug/2016/07Jul2016.pdf

I would be interested to hear opinions about this scoring scheme.

73, Denis - K7GK/6
P.S. It still doesn't address the issue of the UBNs not being available to the 
scorers of contest-within-contest.

________________________________
From: CQ-Contest <cq-contest-bounces+k7gk=hotmail.com@contesting.com> on behalf 
of Richard F DDonna NN3W <richnn3w@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2020 6:53 AM
To: k5zd@charter.net <k5zd@charter.net>
Cc: ko7ss@yahoo.com <ko7ss@yahoo.com>; CQ-Contest Reflector 
<cq-contest@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Contest within a contest

WPX is kind of one of the only contests where you could do scoring on grid
locator.  And even then, not so reliably.  Behavior in contests is very
much points driven, and contesters make very strategic decisions based on
maximizing points.  In WPX, 40 SSB from the midwest and east is a gold mine
when antennas are pointed towards EU.  How you would score based on
distance could be quite different given that from New England, stations in
California aren't a heck of a lot closer than a station in the UK.  But for
now, that UK station is worth 6 points versus 1 point for California.

73 Rich NN3W
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