I don't think a 24 hour contest tests endurance at all. Maybe I am just
young enough to not have a problem, but certainly most anyone can go 24
hours straight quite easily. It's those 48 hour marathons that will get
you.
I see no problem with the sprint (the CW sprint anyway) being in the
WRTC selection criteria. You have to be able to do those "other"
contests first, before you can rock the sprint. The top 10 sprinters
are also top 10 in everything else. Certainly not a coincidence!
Actually, a 24 hour contest is more like a mad dash in the DX contest
sense. You only get the opening once. If you miss it, you lost it for
good. At least in a 48 hour contest you can make up for it the 2nd day
a little bit. So really, it's great that the sprint is considered! :)
-Chris KL9A
On Sat, 2005-12-17 at 17:41 -0800, Ken Widelitz wrote:
> Oms and I had this discussion a number of months ago.
>
> Oms states "The selection criteria based upon results is one of the major
> request from our contest population."
>
> I don't know who was asked. I suspect a few members of previous WRTC
> committees or well known contesters who do the Sprint. At the time I did
> some research. This is what I found and emailed to Oms.
>
> "In the most recent Feb '05 CW NA Sprint there were only about 190 entries.
> There was a measly 134 entries for the Feb '05 Phone NA Sprint. In the most
> recent Nov '04 Sweepstakes there were 1557 logs for phone and 1113 logs in
> CW. In the most recent Feb '05 ARRL DX contest there were 1187 US/VE CW
> entries and 1156 US/VE phone entries. Clearly the Phone Sweepstakes is the
> MOST POPULAR U. S./VE contest, by FAR.
>
> For comparison, there were about 1165 logs submitted from the U. S. for the
> 2004 CQWW SSB DX contest and about 1100 logs for the 2003 CQWW CW DX contest
> (the 2004 CW results are not published yet, so I used 2003.) The 2004 CW WPX
> contest had under 650 U. S. logs submitted. The 2004 SSB WPX contest had
> even fewer U. S. logs submitted. The CQWW contests might have the
> reputation, but the Sweepstakes and ARRL DX contests have the popularity in
> the U. S. These are simply the facts. Please, look at the ARRL and NCJ Web
> Sites and the CQ magazine results issues to confirm my statements.
>
> For the NA sprint to be worth more points than the ARRL DX contest when it
> has less than 14% of the entries and 8.3% of the operating time and equal in
> points to the Sweepstakes which has over 8X the entries and 6X the operating
> time is just not right."
>
> In another email in our correspondence I pointed out:
>
> "What skills in the NA Sprint carry over to WRTC, or ANY other contest for
> that matter? Absolutely none! In the NA Sprint you can't hold a CQ frequency
> so you don't make decisions about the consequences of moving multipliers
> (you don't need to move multipliers at all,) you don't make decisions about
> propagation since it is not a DX contest, it is not a mixed mode contest so
> you don't make decisions about whether and when to operate phone or CW and,
> perhaps most importantly, it doesn't test an operator's endurance, which is
> a major component of being competitive in every other amateur radio contest.
> The WRTC is a 24 hour, mixed mode DX contest. The applicants should be
> judged and selected on that basis."
>
> Oms disagreed with me then also. Well, it is their football and they make
> the rules. However, it does make a BIG difference.
>
> As far as the US West entries go, N6MJ is ahead of me by 17.15 points. Four
> of his best 8 contests for WRTC consideration are from the 4 hour NA Sprint.
> Only one of mine is. So for operating 12 hours, Dan gets about 50 points on
> me for my 100+ hours of operating in more popular (by entries) contests.
> This is not to denigrate Dan's contesting skills in any way. It is just an
> example of what I perceive as the inherent lack of fairness in the selection
> criteria. I'll have to wait and see if there is another higher scoring US
> West entry that bounces me from #2.
>
> You can say this is sour grapes on my part, and you might be right about
> that. But at least my grapes were grown in a logical fashion.
>
> 73, Ken, K6LA / VY2TT
>
>
>
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--
Chris Hurlbut <c_hurlbut@adelphia.net>
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