June VHF Contest outrage

[pascoe at MathWorks.COM]

Mike, W9IP wrote:

>I have been told by several reliable sources that the June VHF contest
>was moved from its traditional 2nd-weekend time to the 1st weekend (a
>much poorer time for propagation) in order to accomodate the wishes of
>ONE person: Joel Harrison, WB5IGF, the Delta Division Director.  You
>see, he found it inconvenient to have the June contest conflict with the
>ARRL convention in Dallas.  Harrison even bragged about his
>"accomplishment" on the 75-meter VHF net.

>Is this outrageous or what?

I've been going back and forth with others via e-mail on this.  I
agree with Mike that this is an outrage.  This should never be allowed
to happen.  Lots of contest groups work real hard to secure access to
certain "hard to get" sites and often the site can be reserved
only for a certain weekend.  In many cases, this is not flexible.

I can't believe Joel Harrison has this kind of pull......old boy
network between him and the League, I suppose?

This is bogus.......

-Dave KM3T

>From aa2du at attmail.com (J P Kleinhaus )  Thu Jan 20 18:07:26 1994
From: aa2du at attmail.com (J P Kleinhaus ) (J P Kleinhaus )
Date: 20 Jan 94 18:07:26 GMT
Subject: NCJ Rebuttal

In reponse to comments made by WA6OTU and WB2EKK:

It is news to me that people regard the scoring of the ARRL DX Contest
as unfair.  The ARRL has a paid staff to check contest logs as opposed to the operation at CQ where everyone is a volunteer.  If anything, that would lead me to the conclusion that there is less opportunity for screwing up at the ARRL because it is all done in house.  The logs are not scattered around the four corners of the country and the people performing the checking are doing their jobs...not volunteering. Who do you think takes the responsibility more seriously?

Mark and John both agree that a change in the reporting of the results is overdue.  While I think that we should have more regional reporting, the creation of five Top-5 boxes is overkill.  I would much rather see a National Top-10 listing as well as three regional Top-5 boxes representing the major time-zones in the USA for example.

I am in agreement with John that splitting the entries into separate classes of "Competitor" and "Participant" is a real bad idea!  We are trying to encourage increased participation, not the increased perception of contesters as an elitist clique.  The creation of a caste system among our ranks will do nothing but turn the ARRL DX Contest into a giant club meeting...you will work the same guys on all bands within the first 24 hours and then you can shut off your radios. This may be the answer to the
part-time contesting question that flew around here several months ago <grin>.

Let's all remember that CQ is the one that requires a paper log to be submitted with your disk.  The ARRL is perfectly happy to accept your log entry via Internet, the ARRL BBS or by mailing in a disk.  No paper is required...who is more likely to computer check your log?
Electronic submission is the way of the future...the ARRL is trying to implement such a program.  The result will be more accurate reporting and less chance for human error in reporting the results.

73, J.P. Kleinhaus AA2DU
ARRL Hudson Division CAC Rep.
aa2du at attmail.com (for now)

Disclaimer:  This is not meant as an attack on the CQ staff...please do not send me flameage!

>From Edward Parish <parish at Think.COM>  Thu Jan 20 19:00:25 1994
From: Edward Parish <parish at Think.COM> (Edward Parish)
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 94 14:00:25 EST
Subject: June VHF Contest outrage
Message-ID: <9401201900.AA12854 at thor.think.com>

   From: pascoe at MathWorks.COM
   Date: Thu, 20 Jan 1994 11:42:30 -0500 (EST)

   Mike, W9IP wrote:

   >I have been told by several reliable sources that the June VHF contest
   >was moved from its traditional 2nd-weekend time to the 1st weekend (a
   >much poorer time for propagation) in order to accomodate the wishes of
   >ONE person: Joel Harrison, WB5IGF, the Delta Division Director.  You
   >see, he found it inconvenient to have the June contest conflict with the
   >ARRL convention in Dallas.  Harrison even bragged about his
   >"accomplishment" on the 75-meter VHF net.

   >Is this outrageous or what?

   I've been going back and forth with others via e-mail on this.  I
   agree with Mike that this is an outrage.  This should never be allowed
   to happen.  Lots of contest groups work real hard to secure access to
   certain "hard to get" sites and often the site can be reserved
   only for a certain weekend.  In many cases, this is not flexible.

   I can't believe Joel Harrison has this kind of pull......old boy
   network between him and the League, I suppose?

   This is bogus.......

   -Dave KM3T

Not to mention that it is one less week and weekend for people to assemble,
build or fix their stations after the long winter.  We (W2SZ/1) are
fortunate in (hopefully) having access to our "hard to get" site, but I
know that one sizeable contest group in our area may not be able to.  If
Mr. Harrison was so keen on VHF contesting, why did he allow the ARRL to
schedule the convention on the contest weekend in the first place?  Did it
conflict with HAMCOM or something?

Ed WA2SCA