Jim Brown said:
> When I moved 2,000 miles from Chicago to near San Francisco, I started
over on all of my awards.
Nice for you. Please don't impose this rule on the rest of us. Many
operating awards are, realistically, life time achievements and are meant
to be.
A lot of us do _not_ move voluntarily. We move to where the work is. I
had 185 zones in Minnesota and then I ended up having to leave for "the
next job" and ended up in Arizona. 185 zones took me 20 years. I'm very
happy not to start over (and the remaining zones are mostly harder from
here anyway than before).
If you want to have what amounts to an excess of virtue, nobody is stopping
you. There's a lot of "you set your own handicap" in amateur radio. So,
you're welcome to make it as hard on yourself as possible. Somebody
probably got to the Honor Roll QRP. Bless whomever managed it. But, I'll
bet that if there is such a person, they live in Maine or Delaware or some
such. Maybe Florida.
We all have to do ham radio as we find it, wherever we live. And, if you
live in Iowa, then a lot of these awards are harder than if you live in
Maryland no matter what the station is like. Simple fact of life. If
someone made Honor Roll QRP from Iowa, that's _really_ something.
Meanwhile, DXCC et al. is easier from Aruba or even Cuba even if neither
one allows one to move about significantly.
Stateside, you can struggle or you can do something about it. You can find
an accommodating Hotel or Motel somewhere and put up a station on the East
Coast that isn't quite a Super Station and probably do very well in CW WW
and better than you can from the Midwest.
Is that wrong, too? In this hypothetical, one rents the _location_, just
not the rigs and antennas. Yet, I'll wager that some frustrated amateurs,
especially the HOA-challenged, did this very thing, because it is an
affordable easy way to improve their score. And will do so again.
So, what's the limit? None of this, as far as I can tell, is explicitly
spelled out in the Part 97, the DXCC rules nor the CQ WAZ rules for that
matter.
Each DX entity comes with its own restrictions that you have to work
around. If you live on many Carribean Islands, you may find really stiff
import fees for amateur gear. So that "10 dB" you gain for "being the DX"
is countered by added (significant) expense. Being a continental entity
like the US is nice, as far as it goes, but there are plenty of
compensating problems, too. True wherever you are.
Larry WO7R
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