All,
As the founder/originator/creator of the NAQP, I feel compelled to
comment on this thread
The NAQP was the brainchild of myself and several other active
contesters in the Contest Hospitality Suite at the ARRL National
Convention in Lousville, KY in the fall of 1987 as a replacement for the
ARRL Open CD Party contest which had been discontinued by the ARRL. At
the time, I was the editor of the NCJ, and the ARRL's role as publisher
of the NCJ was just on the horizon. Since the NCJ had successfully
sponsored the Sprints for over a decade at that point, I saw sponsoring
the NAQP as a natural extension of that type of role.
The CD Party rules, which was a single mode contest where dupes were
counted by band was a good starting point. However, CD parties were 30
hour periods with ten hours off time and mults counted once overall.
The short 4 hour operating period of the Sprint enjoyed considerable
popularity, so the period was cut back to 10 hours out of 12 to keep the
rate up and avoid running out of people to work. Mults were counted by
band to encourage band changing and strategy like a DX contest. The
final result was a domestic contest that played somewhat like a DX
contest, but yet small to medium stations could be competitive enough to
have a good time and you didn't need to be an iron man to compete full
time..
The NAQPs were originally full power contests as were the CD Parties.
High power helped guys with poor antennas on 160 make QSOs, but it was
the high bands where the power helped initially. The early NAQPs in
1988/89 suffered from poor high band condx and high power helped many
stations get mults on 10m and 15m by scatter. Since then we've been
through another sunspot minimum and we've seen that working hi-band
mults on scatter is a lot more difficult with low power.
I think it was 1996 when Bill Fisher, W4AN first floated the idea of
making the NAQPs low power contests. There was never any discussion
about "leveling the playing field". The low power limit was advocated
as a way to differentiate the NAQPs from other contests, and by shedding
the outboard amplifiers band agility (to move multipliers) would be
simplified and SO2R (which was just coming into its own around that
time) would be easier for many stations.
As for the W5WMU experiment, I will offer a quote from another contester
(who shall remain anonymous):
"You only have to follow the rules of the contest if you're gonna submit
a log for a score"
73, Dave/K8CC
On 1/6/2016 7:43 PM, Art via CQ-Contest wrote:
Just heard from Pat that he will be using high power to feed into 3 different
stacks for NE, N, and NW during the NAQP Saturday. He'll be entering as a check
log but wanted to see how the antennas would play from way down south.
Ought to be interesting!
See you Saturday.
73,
Art KZ5D
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