On Wed,2/24/2016 6:26 PM, Ken Widelitz wrote:
Of course the West coast isn't going to come close to the East coast in a DX
contest.
That depends ENTIRELY on scoring rules. We has hams have gotten used to
the definition of a DX contest as one where number of contacts is
multiplied by number of multipliers, and the ONLY multipliers are
countries. Simple scoring rules of that sort made sense when the only
computers available to us were pencil and paper doing simple addition
and multiplication.
But those simple-minded rules make NO SENSE today, thanks to wide
disparities in the geographical distribution of hams, the geographical
distribution and size of countries, and the VERY different propagation
conditions between hams in various parts of the world and those
population centers. Modern computers make practical the computation of
all sorts of distance-based scoring rules, or of definitions of
multipliers other than a "country."
For all practical purposes in contests, Asia rarely provides more than a
dozen or so countries, OC rarely more than a half dozen, and the
distance to those countries from W6/W7 is significantly greater than
from the eastern seaboard to EU and AF. The only significant activity
in AS and OC is JA.
How would you like it if the European Union was a single multiplier?
That's our condition with China (much of a continent), VK (an entire
continent), Russia (much of two continents), and Japan (often 40% of the
Qs in a west coast log).
If we must insist on the concept of multipliers with no distances, I
propose that JA prefectures be multipliers, along with states in VK and
BY. That would be very easy to do -- they're already numbered. Oh -- but
we can't do that, it would be different, and make it impossible to
compare current scores with historical ones. BS -- spotting networks,
Skimmer, automated messages, SO2R, automated dupe checking have already
done that, in spades!
The REAL reason for resistance to this sort of change is like with any
other privileged group -- they don't want to give up their massive
advantage! You (Ken) have the advantage of a very short hop to EU and
bands that are open a lot more than for most others. Those with contest
stations in the Caribbean have the continental multiplier in some
contests, and a short water path to all the major ham population centers
except JA.
But what about the thousands of little guys you big guns want to work,
who can't afford to rent a station and fly there? Don't they get to have
fun too?
73, Jim K9YC
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