Hello,
Here's an update to an email I sent out incorrectly (wrong address?) yesterday.
Since then I got some help from Bruce Horn, WA7BMN, so this is a new and much
improved version. Ignore anything I sent earlier.
Many have remarked that FT activity is like an ongoing 24/7 contest. That's
true, except there's no real contest. This email is a suggestion for one that
some organization might want to establish.
Since grid locs are a normal part of the FT exchange (most of the time), HF as
well as VHF/UHF grid chasing has become an interest in the FT community. Grids
could also be used for another interesting activity: distance scoring. Right
now grid locs are used for distance scoring in the Makrothen RTTY, WW-Digi and
the Stew Perry contests and perhaps others that I don't know about.
It might be fun to hold year-long events, competitions, if you like, that are
based on the total distances worked by participating stations, summing up all
their QSOs during the year. Score listings could be based on something fun
like astronomical distances (How many trips to the moon and back? Can anyone
make it to the Sun?).
This would run the whole calendar year and operation would be exactly the same
as normal, everyday operation. Grids need to be exchanged or looked up in
those cases where it is skipped for speed or special calls. It spirit it is
similar to the CQ DX Marathon, the UBA Prefix Hunt, N3FJP's WASC, the TBDXC
Ultra-Marathon and others. Results would be made available after the end of
the year.
Last night I calculated the distance in my 2021 AB1J and W1W logs (combined
into one wsjtx-log.adi). I loaded it into ADIFMaster, extracted the grid loc
column and fed it to the ARRL distance calculator at
https://contest-clubs.arrl.org/griddistancecalc.php
After running the program, I took the results, loaded it into an Excel file and
summed the distances. The result was 6,786,493 km from 1930 good QSOs with grid
locs.
Does this idea have any resonance? Even if not, it might be fun at the end of
the year for interested people to calculate a yearly distance total. I could
send out a similar email at year's end to collect scores to post if anyone is
interested.
73,
Ken, AB1J
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