Nice job, Hans.
I try to be ?unstable? too! I have operated from seven different states
since 2002. And I?m thinking about moving, again.
At least in SS the serial number, Precedence, CK, and ARRL/RAC section are
ALL unknowns. Copy or die.
A couple of years ago I suggested doing away with 599 and 59 in all contest
exchanges and got booed ?because the signal report is a placeholder.?
My original post about this was limited to the CK. Some people just don?t
get the charm of sending the year you were first licensed (the rule means
your first amateur radio license, not your first U.S. amateur radio license,
not your driver?s license, not your poetic license).
The All Asia DX Contest has this kind of charm, too, with one?s age as the
exchange.
For those who think SS is too slow on Sunday afternoon, I have a contest
proposal:
A contest for the weak (inaudible)-signal digital crowd, FT8 or JT Whatever,
that requires a real exchange! A ?contact? could take hours.
K1TN
---
Since I am one of those whose SweepStakes exchange may be unstable from year
to
year, I?ll offer my explanation why.
You may agree, or you may not agree with my rationale. No problem to me
either
way. It is what it is.
So here goes.
It is my conviction that RadioSport contests should measure some skill, and
should reward those radiomen most accomplished in whatever skill is being
measured.
Different contests are arranged, deliberately or not, to measure different
skills and talents.
CQWW, as one example, measures a complex skill set which requires a good
radioman to balance high run rates against an effective harvest of
multipliers,
a fine sense of propagation awareness, and knowing when to defer high run
rate
on one band in order to harvest fleeting multipliers on a slower band. The
exchange of information in this contest is quite predictable, and not
challenging to copy. If you correctly copy the call sign ?K0HB? then your
logging program will fill in ?59 4?. In summary, CQWW measures run rate
and
aggregate multiplier harvest, with less emphasis on copying the content of
the
exchange.
SweepStakes has a different emphasis. Run rate is still of some importance,
especially early in the contest, but not nearly to the extent as in CQWW.
The
number of multipliers in SS is miniscule compared to CQWW, only 83 vs
possible
thousands in CQWW. In fact, ?chasing mults? in SS is a really poor use of
time, since nearly every one except a small handful will fall into your log
in
the normal course of operating for 24 hours. So high run rate and effective
multiplier harvest are NOT skills particularly measured by SS.
The challenge in SS is the ability to copy a complex exchange. SS has its
roots in traffic handling (the 5-element exchange mimics the ARRL message
header format).
In traffic handling, none of those 5 elements are predictable
message-to-message, let alone year-to-year. They are not ?unchanging facts?
If SS is built to measure the ability to copy a complex and unpredictable
header, then making the exchange ?predictable? devalues the very skill set
we
set out reward. The more uncertainty we can introduce into the content of
the
exchange, the better the contest will measure and reward those radiomen most
skilled in copying complex information accurately.
My purpose isn?t to confuse you; it is to challenge you to develop the
skills
required to score high in SweepStakes.
On the other hand, you may have different fingers.
73, de Hans, KØHB
"Just a boy and his radio"?
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