Tom,
You have some good thoughts regarding this topic.
There are a lot of variables which cannot and should not be messed
with. The station and operator are the most important variables and
should always be most important.
However, the "poor saps" as you call them would be more competitive
with everyone closer to Europe. Because of where the vast majority of
contacts to be made are located, everyone farther from Europe will be
at an advantage relative to everyone closer to Europe as compared to
the current system. Works both ways. Most, except those in extreme
NE, would be looking straight ahead as well as over their shoulder.
Using your distance figure for the only East Coast state listed (by
your definition) the guy in Illinois would have about 20% on the guy
in MA and lose about 4% to you. That seems like a very good trade to me.
What are your thoughts on the Stew Perry Contest? Seems generally
accepted as a reasonably fair scoring method by stations all over the
world. Is it because that is the way it was set up from beginning and
is accepted as being about as fair as it can be, or is it really quite
unfair? Should the Stew Perry contest (a distance/DX contest) be
changed so those closer to Europe get the same points as those twice
as far? I already know that 160 is a different animal than some
higher bands.
How would you score the ARRL contest if it were new? Surely you would
not assign a flat number of points for each contact out of the country
if on an apples to apples comparison it was clear that one general,
and rather small area had huge advantage over most of the rest of the
country.
It is a difficult subject. If a change is made it would need to be at
least as fair overall as the current system. I think that would be
relatively easy. It would also need to be objective and not viewed as
a handicap system with a subjective component. Anyone who plays golf
can beat Tiger on a good day if handicaps are involved. Of course
those handicaps are developed based on final outcomes - scores posted -
which is not what we are talking about here. There is no joy in
besting Tiger with him "giving" you ten strokes.
My concern is not whether K3LR or KC1XX or W3LPL wins M/M (and one or
the other will most likely continue to win).
As mentioned previously, my goal would be to see a Bunch of people use
the good engineering and a little work as you have mentioned (even the
guy in Midwest for a single band), to put up some antennas with the
belief he could win for that band. At the same time I would like to
see the guy in MA working the same band realize that if he put in a
part time effort he just might not beat that guy in Missouri. That is
a lot better, in my opinion, for this "sport" than the guy in Missouri
playing golf on the contest weekend with someone he thinks he can beat.
73...Stan, K5GO
Sent from Stan's IPhone
On Jun 29, 2011, at 8:15 PM, "Tom W8JI" <w8ji@w8ji.com> wrote:
> This is how well thought out this has been. W9RE is around 300 miles
> closer
> to Germany than I am. I have vastly better propagation, but would
> get an
> edge over Mike.
>
> Why would anyone want that?
>
> The path direction and what is in that path, like the magnetic
> poles, is
> more important than the raw distance. There certainly are case where
> distance matters, but K3LR is about the same distance as northern W0
> land
> from the middle of Europe, and there is no comparison at all in
> propagation.
>
> I think the real goal here is to diminish the advantage of the east
> coast's
> (I hardly call WPa east coast) better PATH to Europe.
>
> I'm not sure how to compensate for better paths in scoring, or if we
> should.
> If we do it by distance, we might as well add a multiplier for being
> in the
> south. The poor saps way up north and in the midwest are going to get
> stiffed by a distance penalty, and they have it a whole lot tougher
> than
> anyone else.
>
>
>> Approximate distances to Germany:
>>
>> Ma 3800
>> WPa (K3LR) 4150
>> Mn 4400
>> Wi 4400
>> IL 4500
>> Mid GA 4700
>
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