Tonno raised an interesting point about "one transmitter" versus "one signal."
Personally, I think the "one transmitter" concept if ideal for M/S (and not
"one signal").
The concept of "one signal," as described, includes multiple transmitters per
band, which
clearly must be interlocked to be comply with the letter and spirit of the
rules.
I think having multiple transmitters per band will lead to situations where
there are
two signals on the band at once, but unless someone happens to be very lucky and
discovers that by "accident," that entrant will be able (in theory) to violate
the rules
and never be caught. Even QSOs "in the same minute" can be argued (later) that
one
QSO took place 00:00:00 and the other took place at 00:00:30. Or more likely,
that
one took place every 10 seconds, in perfect synchronization.
In CQWW DX, the odds of finding new mults on the 2nd rig, other than the very
beginning
of the contest, is not so great, so 10 minutes affords one plenty of time to
grab all of the
available "new" mults. In WPX, however, every 1:3 QSO's is a new mult for the
entire
contest (just a guess at the ratio). In CQWW DX, nobody works "so many" new
mults in
the allowed 10 minute window. But in WPX, I can easily imagine that one would
work new
mults at a very high rate by using (say) 5 rigs per band and each operator
covering X kc
of the same band. Each op tunes "their" segment of the band (say 20kc on CW)
and finds
a new mult. When everybody is queued up with a new mult (no conflicts) and the
10 minutes
"starts," they each take one turn working one new mult.: Mult Op#1 works "his"
new mult.
The moment he is done, Mult Op#2 works "his" new mult., etc. After each op
completes
"his" new Mult qso, he immediately starts to retune "his" segment of the band
so as to find
the next "new mult." Or, each op is allowed to work 2 or 3 or even 4 new mults
in a row
before handing it off to the next op to work "his" segment. There are lots of
approaches.
I do not think that this is the original intention of the M/S rule. It sure
does sound like a
lot of fun and a big challenge to coordinate the "team" (well, probably
multiple teams: one
per band), and would generate HUGE scores. It is really more like a
handicapped M/M.
I guess Randy has to figure out if this is where he wants to go or not.
de Doug KR2Q
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