For one or two years in the 1970s, the ARRL International DX Contests
had a change in the rules to permit everyone overseas to contact each
other too. There was much dissatisfaction with it from W/VE stations
because it resulted in many more DX stations working each other and
ignoring the weaker W/VE stations even when the bands were open for
working W/VE areas. Think of the former time for beginning the CQ 160
CW contest at 00Z and all the Eu stations were loud in NA but couldn'g
hear the NA callers because they were too busy working other loud
European stations. So the rule was changed back.
For a while in the 70s or 80s, we also had high band (10, 15, 20) and
low band (40, 80, 160) categories. That may have been before we had
single band categories.
The best change made since I started working the contests in 1956 was
doing away with the quota system which allowed only a small number of
QSOs by US stations with any given DX country. This meant that many of
the smaller DX stations had to be or were ignored by the big US stations
because they wouldn't count for points. It basically discouraged
operation in populous DX contries except by the top stations and even
they couldn't work a W/VE station for credit after the quota had been
reached by the W/VE station.
73, John, K4BAI.
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