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[VHFcontesting] VHF+ Contesting Rule Changes

To: vhfcontesting@contesting.com
Subject: [VHFcontesting] VHF+ Contesting Rule Changes
From: Ward Silver <hwardsil@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 23:42:55 -0600
List-post: <vhfcontesting@contesting.com">mailto:vhfcontesting@contesting.com>
With respect to the new categories, there's nothing particularly odd about the timing. The changes approved in January of 2014 (and publicly announced in board reports) have just taken a while to work their way through an over-burdened system. Here's my take on it - not official, I'm not staff, I just edit contest writeups and help shovel on various projects :-)

The ARRL Board Programs and Services Committee approved the addition of Single-Op Unlimited categories to *all* ARRL contests at the January 2014 meeting. This was based on a recommendation in 2013 by the CAC that was approved by the Awards Committee, THEN passed to the P&SC which THEN passes it back to staff. Here's the report:

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/About%20ARRL/Committee%20Reports/2014/January/Doc_16.pdf

Note that the CAC recommendation (all reports are online at http://www.arrl.org/committee-reports) only referred to HF contests but the P&SC extended that recommendation to *all* ARRL contests. Note also that while the P&SC report refers to the category names as "Assisted", the actual word used in the titles is "Unlimited".

Yes, it would have been nice to have this all announced and implemented a year ago but about the time of the P&SC directives in January, the ARRL Contest Branch Manager abruptly abandoned ship, leaving a rather large backlog and no one to manage any of the existing processes, much less add new categories. KX9X, N1ND, and I shared those duties during the replacement process and the current manager W1MSW was hired and started work in July. Matt has done an awesome job getting caught up and making sure all the processes are working as well as they can. And there was this Centennial thing right in the middle of that, as well. Part of his catch-up job has been to update the rules to include the previously approved categories and this has now been accomplished with the January VHF Contest being the final one to get the new SOU categories. Without the unexpected personnel turnover, this would have been announced and implemented in early 2014 and the timing would not have been an issue.

The ad-hoc committee was not approved until the July 2014 board meeting, six months after the extension of SOU to VHF+ contests was approved. Here's that report (see page 2):

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/About%20ARRL/Committee%20Reports/2014/July/Doc_16.pdf

Now...as to the ad-hoc committee's potential rule changes. The first part of this email should give you some idea of the speed at which changes occur. Anything the ad-hoc committee comes up with will have to be placed on the agenda for the P&SC committee's next meeting. The recommendations of the P&SC committee will then have to be approved by the Board at *their* next meeting. If I am correct in understanding the process and assuming no report from the ad-hoc committee has been delivered, no rule change decision could be made by the board until July at the very earliest and even next January is probably optimistic. Furthermore, a comprehensive set of changes will likely require changes in data processing at HQ and that will have to get in line with everything else ARRL IT has on their plate in a very tight budget year.

In my opinion, VHF+ rule changes will happen - but it will be a while before they are actually implemented just because of the way governance happens in the ARRL and because of limited IT resources. To stay up to date and prevent surprises, watch for the various committee reports as they come out to find out what staff is being directed to do, status of ongoing projects, and if there are any other dependencies on budget or resources to get them done.

73, Ward N0AX
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