Hello Kirk et al,
I feel a misunderstanding about "competitor friendly contesting". It
should not be about more wallpapers or watering down. My point is the
better adaptation of contesting to the real world situation of most
hams. Of course power to all who can afford more than 40 hours and
setting the standards. But you too know that it is not possible for most
and it´s no sign of lesser skill and commitment to share parts of the
weekend with a family and other obligations. The semi-professionals in
our amateur sport will still take the big titles. But with shrinking ham
population we should have more competetive offers fitting better in most
everyday lifes. Why call this greater part of the ham and contesting
population more or less whiners who are only eager to get plaques
without commitment? And they should also do it in the big events -
having the real challenge and perhaps helping for a bigger overall
number of QSOs because of a more attractive contest.
There are even so many big guns regretting on 3830 too less available
time ("family obligations", "business flights scheduled" and so on).
Because of that reasons there would always be a lot of them in a (maybe
informal) 24-hour half-marathon . So it won´t have whimpy results and
cheap plaques. The best scorers will have to have all the stacks, skill
and commitment you described. A quick copy&paste from 3830 final claimed
scores with up to 30 hours of operation from 2004 CW-CQWW:
USA SOAB HP
K4ZW 1810 127 376 30 2,555,743
K1NQ 1310 120 380 28 1,775,500
W2XL 1226 119 352 28 1,615,530
N2CU 1125 118 344 23.8 1,445,136
K9OM 1091 121 352 18 1,417,581
Every ham who is crazy enough for contesting will try to be on as many
hours as possible, so I don´t see the danger of shrinking participation
with "half-marathons" - even now the majority of participants don´t go
for more than 30 hours, not to mention more than 40. But the "biggie"
will always be the ultimate goal even if only rarely possible.
Besides that time-based "categories" could also help for a better
comparison of results. Now our result tables are like lists of a golf
tournament with every player finishing an unknown number of something
between 36 and 72 holes. Getting offered such a list in my real world
job as journalist the brave press officer would have a hard job to
explain that... It could be solved by adding the hours of operation to
the score lines or something like different background colours for over
40h, over 30h, over 20h. The logchecking software could do it with an
even standard in no time.
Thanks for reading and best 73, Chris (DL8MBS)
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