Jim has a point.
For a 24 hour category to work w/in a 48 hour contest, it would have to be a
contiguous 24 hour period. Exactly which one may be up to the contest
sponsors (ie UTC Saturday only, UTC Sunday Only, or any given 24 hour
period) but it needs to be one 24 hour block. Otherwise the "24 hour" gang
can cherry pick the bands they want to maximize Q's.
Or to put it another way, there should be a way of distinguishing, IMHO,
YMMV, between someone who runs in the 24 Hour category and someone who
operates 24 Hours in the 48 Hour category. After all, isn't one of the
reasons for proposing this category is to accommodate those who only have
one 24 hour window available to operate on the contest weekend?
On the same lines, I would think that someone operating in the 24 hour
category should not be able to "do a double." If you can operate all 48
hours, then why do a double 24? And how can you do that within the other
rules of the contest(s) in question? (Specifically, rules about two
different calls from the same QTH and so on)
73, ron wn3vaw
'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately
explained by stupidity.' --Hanlon's Razor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim White, K4OJ" <k4oj@tampabay.rr.com>
To: cq-contest@contesting.com
Subject: [CQ-Contest] 24 vs 48 - NO NEW CAREGORIES!
My take: The creation of a 24 hour category will only end up hurting the
48 hour competitors...
WHY?
if I am only going to operate 24 hours I sure as heck am not gonna pick
the hours when the sun is down...I will operate when 10/15/20 will
provide me the most run time...which basically is dawn to dusk with a
little before and after for gray line, etc...
RESULT:
Lower multiplier numbers, guys who might have made a handful of 160/80
QSOs will now not make any - and mebbe forgoe 40 as well... guys who are
24ing it from rarer multilpiers will not be in the logs of all band
contenders.... US guys who have family commitments during the day will
grudgingly do their 24 and then moan about how they cannot possibly
compete with someone who can run Europe in the mornings... etc.
Just like differentiating between power, or SO2R, or other pereceived
gotta have catagories the easiest thing to do is list us all together,
yeah all mixed together. But but but.... with columns indicating hours
operated - you wanna find out if you made the most points of any 20 hour
entry - sort the results by the hours worked column... done.
During minima this column could also be an interesting byte as I suspect
there will be less time spent on the air by the top ten finishers -
wheras at maxima there always could be someone to work - with degrading
sunspots the top finishers will be operating 42 instead of 48 hours, etc...
Creation of yet another "category" will just further cheapen things - if
you really wanna know op time direct your efforts towards asking powers
that be for that column, showing the hours on the air... an algorthythm
could be generated in the log scoring software to indicate on-time, it
would be after so minutes without a QSO you are off the air - no arguing
fellas - since that would be automatically calculated USING THE SAME
FORMULAE FOR ALL OF THE CONTENDERS.... if the formula said you operated
22 hours - you could compare your score with others whose on time was
calculated to be 22 hours. Mebbe it isn't exactly true but like any good
contest rule as long as it is uniform in its application to all entries
it is FAIR.
Of course if you were number psychotic you could then input this info
into a spread sheet and calculate points per hour - and could then
speculate had your neighbor operated same hours instead of 4 different
whether or not one of you won the East Armpit, Anytown competition...
...but then you would argue about it being unfair because his old Alpha
was from the 1000W days and you had a new Alpha which could go the full
1500.... yada yada
73,
Jim, K4OJ
79 days until the Florida QSO Party - check out:
http://www.qsl.net/fqp/
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