There are a lot of "shades of gray" in contesting. Probably the closest one
comes to a true measure of competitive result is WRTC where all the players
are running the same power, to the same antenna, from essentially the same
location. Other than that, one's location, antennas, and equipment can
enhance or detract from one's score vis a vis the others.
Some things are less gray. If you are using RBN or a spotting network to
find stations to work then you are clearly in a different category than
someone who does not. Hence, we have assisted and unassisted. Power
categories are notoriously unlevel playing fields. A KW into a gain antenna
is decidedly more effective than a KW into a vertical - yet both would be
HP. A station running 155 watts and one running 1.5KW would be lumped into
the HP category. If we tried to make things as equitable as possible, we
would have a category matrix that includes location, antennas, and the like.
That would be crazy. So, we live with an imperfect system.
As regards pre-fills, I don't use them because I type 85 wpm. And, if I did
use a pre-fill, it would be based on an ADIF from one of my own logs and not
a compendium (K0HB is right about that, I think). With regard to SO2R versus
SO1R, personally, I would be equally happy to leave it as is, or separate it
into its own category. I operate SO2R and it took a long time to become
comfortable with it, but I agree that intrinsically I should be able to do
slightly better than someone of comparable skill using SO1R. But, I will
probably do better than someone with comparable skill, in my area, on 80
meters using my rotary dipole at 90 feet versus a fixed dipole at 50 feet
even if we had the same exact equipment.
I think this is going to be one of those topics that we will agree to
disagree on. Trying to slice and dice the categories to make things more
fair will result in making things a lot more complex without making much of
a dent on fairness.
Rob K6RB
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