Making Things Easier for the Left Coast

Wed Dec 29 11:25:34 EST 1993

Re: Contests that are really WAEs for East Coasters

In Maryland we have limited fishing for Rockfish (striped bass) since we
began to fear that they might go extinct. While fishing for rockfish was
enjoyed up and down the east coast, MD took the lead in trying to preserve
(perserve?) this species.

I am beginning to fear that another species may go extinct, due to the 
secondary effects of the Whinus Equalus disease - namely contesters west
of the Mississippi.

In order to preserve this relatively rare but amazingly persistent species,
I am proposing that East Coast contesters observe the following voluntary
restrictions:

When running Europeans:

1. Ask every station that responds to your CQ to repeat his call phonetically
and to describe his favorite recipe.
2. Provide each station worked with the run frequency of a station west of
the Mississippi.

When running JAs:

1. After every second QSO, stop to complain about how much easier it is
for Left Coasters to work this unending well of QSOs and prefixes. This 
should reduce your rate enough to provide relief for Western Contesters.
2. Ignore all Europeans that call off the back of your beam. For those that
persist, explain the inequity of your ability to work scads of EU, and 
suggest that try to work as many 6,7, and 0 land stations as possible.

Miscellaneous:
1. In WPX, only operate 30 of the 36 hours, taking your off-time during the
EU openings. If your score is *still* higher than that of the 6/7/0 species,
don't send in your log.
2. In SS, operate as many hours as possible as hard as you can - learn to
empathize about busting your butt in an unwinnable contest. If you have been
doing that quietly for years anyway - be more vocal about it.
3. For Sprints, and any other domestic contest, east coasters should see 2
above.

If East Coast Contesters were to observe these voluntary restriction, we may
be able to revive the endangered Left Coast species. If not enough contesters
observe these restrictions, we may need to have more drastic, involuntary
measures:

1. Forced relocation of OH2BH to Japan.
2. Bring back country QSO quotas.
3. Make contacts with amateurs in states that begin with M, P, or New worth
only 2 points to Europeans.
4. Move the ARRL and CQ publishing to Visalia.

Perhaps at the next East Coast Contesters dinner at Dayton we can debate
these conservation measures. 

John WB2EKK
pescatore_jt at ncsd.gte.com

>From k2mm at MasPar.COM (John Zapisek)  Wed Dec 29 19:32:40 1993
From: k2mm at MasPar.COM (John Zapisek) (John Zapisek)
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 93 11:32:40 PST
Subject: W5XD Updates Wlogview
Message-ID: <9312291932.AA19641 at greylock.local>

Wayne:  Got your WLOGVIEW update OK.  I've updated the FTP-able files.

> [Wayne/W5XD]  John, It has been pointed out to me that my Windows bin file
> viewer reports the QSO times off by 2 hours.  I have a fix.

To download WLOGVIEW, connect to server "maspar.maspar.com" (192.84.231.1)
and CD to directory "pub/k2mm/wlogview".  There you'll find these files:

    wlogview.zip     78093 bytes -- PKZIP'ed archive
    wlogview.exe    215552 bytes -- UNZIP'ed version
    template.wk1      1273 bytes -- UNZIP'ed version

>From Skelton, Tom" <TSkelton at engineer.clemsonsc.NCR.COM  Wed Dec 29 22:34:00 1993
From: Skelton, Tom" <TSkelton at engineer.clemsonsc.NCR.COM (Skelton, Tom)
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 93 14:34:00 PST
Subject: UA0 Siberian zone 18?
Message-ID: <2D2205E2 at admin.ClemsonSC.NCR.COM>

Can someone please confirm and/or correct that the following
UA0 suffix starting letters indicate zone 18: (ie, UA0Axx)
A, B, H, O, S, U and W.  Of course UA0Y is zone 23, and CT
tells me the remaining are zone 19 (UA0Cxx, UA0Dxx, etc.).

Thanks!  73, Tom WB4IUX
Tom.Skelton at ClemsonSC.NCR.COM

>From oo7 at astro.as.utexas.edu (Derek Wills)  Wed Dec 29 20:07:07 1993
From: oo7 at astro.as.utexas.edu (Derek Wills) (Derek Wills)
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 93 14:07:07 CST
Subject: UA0 Siberian zone 18?
Message-ID: <9312292007.AA08336 at astro.as.utexas.edu>

WB4IUX asks:
	Can someone please confirm and/or correct that the following
	UA0 suffix starting letters indicate zone 18: (ie, UA0Axx)
	A, B, H, O, S, U and W. 

The WAZ rules from CQ Mag, which everyone should get if they are
interested in WAZ, says all the above, plus T and V, are in #18.
I don't think the WAZ boundaries have changed for many years now.

Derek AA5BT

>From alan at dsd.es.com (Alan Brubaker)  Wed Dec 29 20:48:14 1993
From: alan at dsd.es.com (Alan Brubaker) (Alan Brubaker)
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 93 13:48:14 -0700
Subject: Making Things Easier for the Left Coast
Message-ID: <9312292048.AA07592 at dsd.ES.COM>

No news here, John. Most of us out here who have been at this for awhile and
have not yet given up in disgust realize that in the major DX contests there
is just no chance (except in a few rare instances) that any of us would be
able to "win". Most of us know that the big east coast stations are just 
unbeatable, period. Most of us realize that if we are going to compete with 
anyone, it is going to be someone across town, or maybe in the next state. 
One of the things that we do not get to enjoy out here is running Europeans 
for hours on 80 or 160. We may as well be in a different country, but we are 
not - yet, anyway. Two or three time zones and thousands of miles is far from 
a "level playing field" and you cannot change the laws of physics and the lay 
of the land. Personally, when I get into one of these things with my modest 
station, my expectations of "winning" are very low. Why do I bother? Well, to 
some degree I still find it enjoyable, and occasionally I crack a pileup on an 
especially juicy multiplier, not because of brute force necessarily, but maybe
because I was lucky enough to find that station at the peak of our short
window of opportunity for that particular path. Now and then, if I work
especially hard, I will even just get into the top ten or win a certificate.
I believe that there is more to contesting than just winning, although it is 
fun to win something once in a while. Those of us out here, and the long 
suffering guys up in the black hole keep getting beaten, year after year, but 
for some reason, we keep coming back. To summarize, as Jim Neiger put it so
well, "...if you don't like your QTH - MOVE!". He is correct, of course.
Happy New Year to all.

Alan, K6XO