Guys,
For county hunting purposes, 'wet lines' do not count. It is obligation of
the mobile to avoid county lines with a waterway of some sort separating the
counties as it is usually a bridge that 'bridges' them. If a mobile decides
to 'put out' both counties, he would do them as separate counties, one at a
time. Parking on a bridge is not the safest move and this is why one cannot
run a 'wet' county line for the CQ Magazine sponsored county hunter award!
As for 'dry' county lines, they are allowed. There is also a rule for the
CQ Magazine award that you can only run a line for two counties at a time,
not three or four. In the US, there ARE geographical points where as many
as four counties do come together. These might be in the middle of a
traffic intersection. To run three or four at once in the middle of an
intersection is about as smart as parking on a bridge.
As far as decreasing the number of available QSOs by allowing county lines,
this can easily be handled in the rules. If the mobile puts out a county
line, why can't he and the stations he works get credit for two QSOs?
With regard to logging software, I think someone has already mentioned that
some of the state QSO party modules do handle the scoring of county lines.
So it appears possible that the logging and scoring issue could be handled.
The above notwithstanding, what encourages the most participation? Letting
people run county lines, or not letting them run them? I tend to think that
encouraging a lot of mobiles to be out and about is what really makes the
QSO parties interesting. It keeps it interesting for both the county hunters
in their vehicles and the county hunters at their homes. For the
contesters, I think they would see better participation.
The IL QSO party this past weekend was a lot of fun....I worked some mobiles
on county lines!
There were also a lot of county hunters going home from an annual county
hunter's convention in TN. I worked a bunch of them on CW.
Just my thoughts....
Ernie KS4Q
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