At 12:19 2004-11-23, Pete Smith wrote:
>While we're at it, let's...[m]ake mults one per band rather than overall.
>Allow one QSO per station per band, and eliminate the Sunday doldrums. To my
>mind, this would make virtually the perfect contest.
Perfect, perhaps, for those few operators who have landed at great stations in
rare sections. The rest of us use the "Sunday doldrums" to (at least
partially) catch up. (Think "tortoise and hare".) With the changes proposed
by Pete, the "rich get richer...." My point here is that a QSO-starved contest
provides an opportunity for creative on-the-air operating strategies to at
least somewhat overcome signal and location limitations. By changing the
format to effectively create a near-infinite number of total contacts, the
winning strategy becomes one of simply putting up as much aluminum as possible
*before* the contest so you can run stations the entire time *during* the
contest.
>In the past, suggestions of this sort were met with the complaint, "That'd be
>just another NAQP."
Which, of course, it wouldn't be, because NAQP doesn't use sections for
multipliers, it uses states. (A strange failing for a contest supposedly
intended to replace the old ARRL CD Parties.)
>...particularly if it attracts SS-plus levels of participation instead of the
>few hundred regulars who get involved in NAQPs.
It would be interesting to ask the half dozen NNY stations I heard during this
year's CW SS how active they would have been if the SS multipliers were states,
not sections. You don't suppose that might be a clue to NAQP's current (lack
of) size, do you? Consider all the QSOs and interest created in the SS by
folks chasing the *nine* California multipliers versus the ease of working
*one* CA in the NAQP. In domestic contests, the use of sections instead of
states boosts activity at least two ways: Stations in "rare" sections make an
extra effort to get on the air; viz., NNY; and stations in non-rare sections
make additional QSOs -- often on bands they might not otherwise bother with --
in their search for multipliers. I can remember many many CD Parties, and
Sweepstakes, too, when I S&P'd my way up and down 15 and 20 meters over and
over on a Sunday afternoon, working *every* W6 or W7 I could find, in the hopes
of getting that SV or WYO multiplier I needed.
Pete has a great idea -- but to me it would no longer be the SS. Instead, I'd
prefer to keep the SS format as it is, and either modify the NAQP to use
sections instead of states or create a new W/VE domestic contest that
incorporates Pete's suggestions and uses sections, not states, as multipliers.
Bud, W2RU (ex-K2KIR)
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