Fascinating discussion. As I recall, this started out as a request to
hear people's thoughts, and I've been thinking about it for a while so
I'll toss my two cents in. Full disclosure -- I've been in NCCC for a
few years now, but my early ham days in the 60s were in PVRC territory
(I became K3FIV, actually KN3FIV, in 1963 in EPA), so I have
experienced a bit of both worlds. I'm also just a little pistol - 100
watts and a dipole; I've found that I enjoy using a modern station but
similar to what I had back in the 60s. Maybe I have the QRP gene.
Anyway, I guess I enjoy contesting, SSB, CW, RTTY, whatever, but I'm
not a "serious contester". I'm just fodder for the big-rate big guns.
Please take what I say as constructive criticism. I know I'm wrong,
I just don't know why. You'll probably tell me.
I probably won't be revealing any state secrets to recall some NCCC
email discussions prior to the last SS. It seemed that a lot of
people were tired of SS. It just wasn't worth the effort. It was
unfair for us West Coast stations. It was too long for aging bodies
to endure and be competitive. Whether or not such things are true, if
people think that they're true, it takes away some of the Fun of a
contest. From any or all of such reasons, the club decided not to
focus on SS 2012. There were sighs of relief, as people were freed
from the yoke of facing another painful SS experience.
Since other people noticed a difference after the contest, we could
conclude that fewer West Coasters participated, or at least spent
fewer hours on the air compared to earlier years. Without the
incentive and pressure of being a club "focus", activity from NCCC in
the SS 2012 "experiment" apparently dropped enough to be noticed.
IMHO, we can learn a few things from this experiment. i think the
major lesson is that people participate in contests because it's Fun -
more Fun than something else they might do that day. Many people just
enjoy using their ham radio equipment, since contests bring the bands
alive with other stations to work. They don't expect to "win" in any
way, but it's fun just to use the radio. It's Fun. I suspect the
majority of stations in contests are in this category, especially the
ones who don't even submit a log.
Die-hard contesters will participate no matter what. But many people
participate because they have at least some hope of winning in some
way. It might be placing in the top ten, or just simply doing better
than they did last year. Again, to them it's Fun.
Contesters with little hope of any personal victory can help their
club to a victory, by contributing their scores to the club aggregate.
That's Fun too.
If you experience enough Fun out of any or all of these reasons for
participating, you're likely to participate. If not, you'll probably
go watch a ball game instead - it's more Fun for you. Without the
"Club Fun" for NCCC members in SS 2012, there was apparently a lot
more ball game Fun that weekend - enough for others to notice.
I think the lesson here, primarily for the contest organizers, is that
the Fun contained in the SS contest itself may have deteriorated. SS
needs an extra push from clubs to convince their members to
participate when they'd rather be doing something else that's more
Fun. Perhaps that may be something the Contest Committee would like
to address.
------
Fast forward to February 2013.
There's another experiment now in progress but possibly not very
visible except to some club members. Forgive me if I don't have all
the details right... NCCC challenged other large clubs to a grand
NAQP battle - kind of a "meet me in the alley" unsanctioned fray, but
the "alley" is the three NAQP battles - CW, SSB, and RTTY. PVRC and
SMC accepted, and these three clubs are now in ongoing combat, with
the final RTTY round later this month.
There's an interesting quirk in this NAQP experiment. Club scores for
the battle will be computed (by the clubs, not the NAQP sponsor) by
adding all of the members' individual scores, as you might expect.
But, the clubs wanted to encourage participation, and encourage
members to try new modes. So, ... each club's score will be
multiplied by the number of club members who make at least 1 QSO in
that particular battle. This "multiplier" has had an interesting
effect in the SS and CW battles which already occurred. Judging by
the whining on email, quite a few diehard CW contesters managed to
find their microphones and make at least one SSB contact. and
similarly the SSB guys overcame unimaginable obstacles to get a CW Q
in their logs. In fact I suspect most of them did a lot more than 1
Q. If you get on for NAQP RTTY on the 23rd, you may hear some rather
familiar contest callsigns struggling with RTTY Qs -- if they can get
the station sorted out and working by then to make at least 1 Q. I
bet they'll make more.
The experiment is still in progress, but it seems everyone's having
Fun, and there's more activity so other participants are probably
having more Fun too. I don't think anyone has an idea which club will
win - and that's Fun too.
A lesson to be learned from this experiment - it's possible to design
a "Contest Within A Contest" (CWAC) to create both more Fun for the
clubs and more participation, which leads to more Fun for everyone.
This can be done without changing the existing rules. It's possible
to introduce a new or different aspect in such a CWAC, e.g.,
increasing participation, by defining the CWAC's own scoring rules
appropriately.
Existing contests' rules can be mentally split into two categories.
The basic rules are ones which affect the Qs themselves - e.g., the
exchange, or what constitutes a "dupe". A rule such as "work any
station only once" fits this category. In a CWAC, you have to live
within such rules; if you do, other participants in the contest won't
notice the difference on the air -- as is happening now in NAQP.
The second category of rules includes the ones which define scoring,
i.e., how you compute the score of a log. Number of points per Q,
multipliers, etc., fall into this category. In general, a CWAC has
pretty broad latitude to define it's own scoring rules without
affecting regular participants in the contest -- as the NCCC/PVRC/SMC
NAQP experiment is doing.
All of this can be done without the need to change any existing
contest rules, as the NAQP experiment demonstrates. It's all under
control of the clubs who decide to "throw down the gauntlet" and name
the venue and rules for their grand shootout. They can simply all
submit their logs to each other for validation. Or maybe they just
trust each other to compute their own results.
-----
SS 2013?
With the SS 2012 and NAQP Battle experiments mostly behind us, I'd
encourage clubs to collaborate and define one or more CWACs to be held
during SS 2013, along the lines of what was done for the current NAQP.
Basic contest rules, the ones that affect QSOs themselves, would be
off-limits, so that the traditional "base" contest isn't disrupted.
But scoring rules for a CWAC could be created as desired by the clubs
involved to support the interests and goals of the clubs who want to
do battle with each other. Traditional SS participants should notice
nothing other than hopefully increased activity, which should be Fun
for everyone.
No existing contest rules need to be changed at all. It's up to the
clubs involved to define what they consider to be enough Fun to accept
the challenge of a CWAC. We seem to argue a lot about all the
problems with existing contest rules and the undesirability or
difficulty of changing them. We can't all agree. But we don't have
to.
Perhaps NCCC, PVRC, and SMC will relish a SS CWAC as a rematch of the
NAQP fray? Perhaps others will join, or form their own
battlegrounds?
Proposals...?
There's been some good ideas floating around. I particularly like the
"gridsquare" club boundary. I'd like to toss two ideas into the
hopper for consideration in defining a CWAC, for SS2013 and other
contests. Both are intended to increase participation and therefore
Fun for everyone.
---
First, the every-club-member-is-a-multiplier in the NAQP battle is an
interesting scoring rule - we'll see what happens with that after that
last round of RTTY.
Another similar "multiplier" scoring rule could be that each club
member gets a multiplier for each member of a different competing club
that they work. On the surface, this might look like a wash. If an
NCCCer works a PVRCer, each club gets a multiplier so there's no real
effect.
However, there are many members of a club who have less than
superstations, and who can therefore be expected to have weaker
signals into the other clubs' territories. To get such stations as
multipliers, the other club would have to be good at pulling out weak
signals, and at finding such stations who might only be on the air for
a short time. Thus this rule would encourage working weaker stations,
who probably haven't been spotted, and therefore test a club's radio
skills at such tasks. It would also make more Fun for those little
pistols, and encourage more participation.
In a two-club CWAC, this might end up being a wash in the scoring.
But in a three-club battle, it becomes more interesting -- e.g., if
PVRC and NCCC don't work each other much, but SMC works a lot of both
PVRC and NCCC, SMC would get a lot more multipliers from exercise of
that weak-signal skill than NCCC or PVRC. Which club has better radio
skills for finding and working weak signals?
Whether this would be "fair" or not is to be seen. But it would be
different, and that should be Fun. Do you go for Rate, and just work
the strongest as they come to you? Or do you seek out the weaker
stations, searching for more multipliers, who probably haven't even
been spotted at all? Even devising the Strategy can be Fun.
This kind of multiplier effect should be especially good at increasing
Fun for the masses of ordinary stations who never have much hope of
winning anything by themselves. But they can have a noticeable
contribution to their Club score - more Fun should encourage more
participation. Of course, I'm biased -- my little station is usually
barely a blip in the NCCC scores. But there's lots of stations like
mine, and encouraging those operators to participate should be Fun for
everyone.
---
So, here's a second suggestion for increasing participation,
especially from people who wouldn't normally participate at all.
Let's get more newbies into contesting by making it easier for them to
get started with a good experience so they get hooked. Yes,
contesting is addictive...
To do this, we encourage clubs to have their members "elmer" one or
more non-contesters to try out contesting, or for existing contesters
to try out a new mode, by being able to use a decent contest station
that is already set up and ready to go. The setup of a contest
station, including radio, computers, software, etc., can be a little
daunting for newbies, especially in complex environments like RTTY.
It doesn't have to be a superstation for a newbie to have Fun.
Probably better if it's not.
An "Elmering Station" is simply a contest station which will be shared
by a number of contesters in turn over the contest period. Each will
use his or her own callsign for a few hours. This will not only give
them the feel of having their own station, but also give each the
opportunity for a realistic contest experience of what they might do
at home. Newbies like to work the easy strong stations first (the
ones who sit on the same frequency for hours - you know who you are).
By using their own callsign (only one callsign per person) Elmering
Stations will be available for Qs whenever their turn at the console
occurs, unlike "multi-op" scenarios where the easy Qs were likely all
made by the first op at the multi-op station early in the contest.
Each club might want to set up one or more such stations. Perhaps a
Serious Contester whose Fun now runs out after 10 hours BIC can enjoy
seeing some newbies use his equipment. In addition to facilitating
elmering newbies, it could provide a way for experienced contesters
with time limitations, or HOA constraints, to spend a few hours having
Fun.
The only effect an Elmering Station should have on the traditional
contesting participants would be the appearance of lots more callsigns
to be worked. That increased activity should make especially the
late-contest period more Fun for everyone. More participation in this
contest, hopefully leading to even more participation in the future.
Such "Elmering" behavior is unfortunately outlawed by ARRL General
Rule 3.5, so any station used for Elmering would be able to submit
only a Checklog for the SS competition itself. Since they probably
have no expectation of winning anything, it's probably not a big deal.
I think the same would be true of the "GridSquare Club Boundary"
rule. But the clubs defining a CWAC could choose to accept such
entrants and count their scores toward the club's results in the CWAC.
-------------
Well, there's lots more such experimenting that's possible, to create
more Fun for everyone without even changing any contest rules.
Perhaps some experiments in CWACs will prove worthy to be incorporated
into the base contest rules. That's up to the decisions of the
contest committees. The CWACs however are only up to the decisions of
the clubs involved.
Hopefully we'll figure out how to have more Fun. Now, time to go --
there's another big NCCC/PVRC battle brewing, and this one's even on
national TV. It's the NCCC Niners against the PVRC Ravens.
If you've gotten this far, you must be a Contester! Thanks for listening!
73,
/Jack de K3FIV
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