1. There is nothing much more boring than a VHF contest.
2. There is no way to make those in low-population areas
competitive with those in cities.
3. The present setup makes both of the problems WORSE.
To help.......
1. While complex, the design of the contests should
concentrate activity on specific bands/times. The present
setup scatters stations all over the place. I get a
small "pileup" going on 2M and somebody wants to "run
the bands" and when I finish that, the pile has gone
elsewhere never to return. It is not unusual for me to
make more contacts in a "Sprint" than during one of the
major contests.
Fixing this will not be easy. I visualize
certain hours assigned to specific bands, with open hours
left for running schedules to fill in the other bands.
2. Limit the effect of being in an urban area. This one
is simple to do, just allow several points for the FIRST
contact in a grid, and then a very small bonus for working
more stations in that grid. I do like distance scoring but
I think I like the above plan better. That said, I recognize
complex scoring setups are a pain.
I operate from a VHF-poor grid (EM99) with a better than average setup
but I generally don't pay a lot of mind to the VHF tests any more. If
I am home, I hit it a while and work whatever shows up. That is in
contrast to some of the state QSO parties, sweepstakes, etc. that are on
HF which are a real blast. I'd really like to burn the finals out of
some of this VHF stuff, but the activity level just doesn't get me
interested enough to get hopping. I suspect there are a lot of other
fellows out there in the same boat.
One man's thoughts.
de K8RYU
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