In the November Sweepstakes contest there are areas in the US with much
higher activity. I have never seen a sweepstakes activity map but the
activity does seem to be in the Midwest and eastern portion of the us. If
you're inside this area most of your QSO's will be on 40-80m and if you're
outside the area your QSO's will be on 10-20m. It is much easier to
operate on the high bands, the low band are noisier, have more QRM and even
broadcast station interference plus a lot of casual operators with limited
antennas don't operate 40m and 80m. So does the one QSO per station really
level the playing field? I don't see any evidence of this. I just looked
at the score database for SS SSB and the following sections are in the top
75 highest scores: AK, AZ, BC, CO, MAR, MT, ND, NM, NTX, NV, PAC, PR, SCV,
SD, STX, VI, WCF, WTX, WWA. I am not suggesting a rule change however the
one QSO per station does make for a long Sunday, especially in the CW leg
where stations struggle to make 15 QSO's /hour. ARRL does a great job of
listing scores by division so you can compete with stations in your general
area, more contest should do that.
John KK9A
Tim Duffy k3lr wrote:
<snip> In conversation with Randy Thompson K5ZD, George makes the case that
Sweepstakes remains the most egalitarian contest on the calendar-favoring
smart operators, not just big stations. He explains why the
one-QSO-per-station rule levels the field.
73
Tim K3LR
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