CQ PUNT, the inside story.

[ames at nebula.decnet.lockheed.com]

Was I serious about the proposed CQ PUNT?  Well, I'm not really too
serious about anything unless there's money on the table or it's 0000 UTC.
There have been several proposals to "equalize" contests, and as a new-
commer, I though my ideas would be less biased by experience.  Is winning
important, well of course it is, but it should have some meaning personally.
Although I've recently upgarded, I was in this years' Novice Roundup and was
the high scorer in my ARRL section.  The man I beat had the lowest score in
the state, so did winning my section have any value?  Was it EQUAL?  I hated
that contest and was tempted not to send in my score, but not because of the
many factors that we have seen come over the reflector, but because of the
very poor operating skills of others I was working and their inability to
even complete a QSO.  My skills are not so hot, but what I was working from
my QTH was much worse.  (Bad enough to be DXers, if you are following the
complaints on the DX reflector.)
If you want more people to get into contesting, the solution is simple - run
more contest in the Novice bands.  If you want contests to be EQUAL, then I
think there is a problem.  Not that they couldn't be structured as such, but
it would merely encourage more cheating which would in the end tend to
destroy contesting, unless you had as pointed out a month or so ago -
contest police.
Judging from the e-mail I have recieved, people are interested in having
fair contest and to make them equal if possible.  But as a comparison, a
while back I asked about headsets, and I seemed to me that a lot more
people were interested in that subject by at least a factor of 10.  Well,
I got my headset, a pair of AKG K280's and am quite happy with them.  If
I add a mike to them, it will be Heil, of course.  But I am waiting to
hear some reports on the "new" Heil headset that come out at Dayton. So I
will wait to hear from someone at the other end of the contest listing,
such as N6TV who I know has a set, tell us what he thinks.  My wife needs
a set of shocks for her car, so maybe I need another headset!  As far as,
CQ PUNT goes it is a joke because it takes people to contest, and most of
us (myself included) are only interested in QSOs and Multipliers.

73, alan N2ALE/6