>>A 24 hour catagory makes sense. I think it should be all band only
Gary Sutcliffe - W9XT
Well, then the people who can only work 10-15-20 are going to complain.
They are going to want to have categories for daytime operation only.
Seems to me that most people are either Real Contesters[tm] or they are
noodlers who S&P, fill in band-countries, work on 5BWAS etc. Both these
groups are happy with 48 hr contests.
If you want to win a contest badly enough, you arrange your life so that
you do the 48 hrs. If you own the traditional cruddy dipole, or your
spouse rations you to 2 hrs of radio a day, or you have a short attention
span, you just have fun in the contest and you don't expect to win your
section.
You can always compete against yourself, or try for a clean sweep in SS
and get an ARRL coffee mug. The only thing I can think of that would
keep the casual contester happy is having certificates for making more
than 1000 Qs, or working all zones in CQWW, all states in a 160m contest
and so on. The *only* reason I did the SS was to see if I could work
all sections and get the stupid coffee mug. I did that, and 160 people
who were mostly Real Contesters[tm] got QSOs they would not have had
otherwise.
Anyway, if you want to win some subsection of a contest, you do the thing
properly; if you want to have fun, you noodle around and probably don't
even send in a log. The people who win the 4-hour Sprints are the same
people as those who win the 48-hour CQWW. I have never felt ashamed
or humiliated by not being in the Top N of a contest - by the time the
results are out up to a year later, I've probably forgotten that I was
in the contest in the first place. There may be some sense in having
a category for Half-Serious Contesters, but that's no reason to reduce
the duration of the contest and annoy the Real Contesters[tm] and the
noodlers alike.
See y'all this weekend - maybe... sort of..
Derek Wills (AA5BT, G3NMX)
Department of Astronomy, University of Texas,
Austin TX 78712. (512-471-1392)
oo7@astro.as.utexas.edu
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