Drop 10 Minute Rule?

[Trey Garlough]

> My belief is that Multi/Single was intended for stations like those
> that most of us have to enter contests with more than one operator
> to keep the station going without having to try to compete with the
> Multi/Multi stations. Some people took advantage of the opportunity
> in an effort to grab the awards from the real M/S stations. The 10
> minute rule helped to curb this abuse.

The 10-minute rule is what makes the M/1 category painful and the 
M/2 (ARRL) and M/S (CQWW) cateorgies interesting.  That ten minute 
wait seems like an eternity after you work that KP4 on 160 for a new 
one and want to get back to CQing on 20.

A hack that has been suggested to throttle band changes is imposing
a limit of six band changes per hour.  This is functionally equivalent 
to the current scheme (60 minutes/hour * 1 band-change/10 minutes),
except you don't have to send 9.5 minutes of your life down the ground 
wire after making a quick QSY down to work KH6CC.  One unfortunate side 
effect of the current scheme is that KH6CC ends up with fewer contacts.

This is why single-op big guns regularly outscore their similarly
equipped neighbors who operate M/1.  If it weren't for the fact that
the rule is slightly more complicated administratively, I would be 
100% for it rather than 90% for it.  Although, I suppose computers
woudn't fret over this complication.

--Trey