I'm amazed this thing is being pushed so hard without any science to back
the opinion that a distance problem really exists or that it can be
corrected or reduced by some forced change in rules.
This has concluded in a letter writing campaign to voice opinions without
any reasonable effort to think through the problem. If we all planned and
investigated contest station's physical and operating strategy as well as
this matter has been reasoned through before jumping to a solution, it would
be impossible to build a winning station.
Let's be honest here and look at what the goal really is. The goal is to
deflate the scores of stations who always win (or inflate the score of those
who cannot win), so other people have a chance with whatever they happen to
be running and using for operators. Of course we all know that every
operator is the best, and every station is the best no matter how good or
bad they really are. :-)
Once we roll distance into the scoring, we simply shift the perceived
"unfairness" to someone else.
Instead of changing the rules, less do this thing like bracket racing. Let's
handicap all stations based on location and antennas, so the only real
scoring differences are operators and random unpredictable changes in
conditions. After all, that is what we are really after.
There are really only two ways to solve inequality:
1.) We let everyone compete on the same scoring system but break it into
different districts or areas. There will be no top ten all USA winners.
2.) We handicap stations with a correction multiplier based entirely on
geographical location.
If we really want to take a page from Karl Marx, there is a third solution.
We use a multiplier that corrects inequality based on scores from each
station averaged over many years.
73 Tom
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