Enough Already!!

[Ray Rocker]

>  True Ken, but does the word "overkill" mean anything here? After 50
> toilet jokes and 150 soup/gas/nitro posts, things become ridiculous.
> Geez, we beat subjects to death, then into the next lifetime, and the
> next...etc. Way too much to wade through at times.

Well, that kind of thing goes on in just about every unmoderated mailing list,
Usenet group, and bbs forum in existence. Just a sign of an interested,
enthusiastic readership.

Besides, if no one spoke up all we'd get are those "UNSUBSCRIBE" messages and
the "I can't figure out how to UNSUBSCRIBE hep me!" and those are a lot more
boring than {gas | soup | grid squares | coax marking} threads IMHO. :-)

ObContesting: I'd vote against changing any current contests to use grid 
squares. The inevitable invalidation of current score records is reason
enough, but imagine trying a wrangle a grid square out of each non-contester
that stops by. You'd have to be quick with a map or get slowed down.

-- ray WQ5L rrrocker at ingr.com // my grid is on my QSL but I don't know it


>From jtp1 at gte.com (John Pescatore)  Fri Jul 29 16:23:32 1994
From: jtp1 at gte.com (John Pescatore) (John Pescatore)
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 1994 11:23:32 -0400
Subject: Grid Squares
Message-ID: <199407291523.LAA11372 at bunny.gte.com>

When K1AR asked for suggestions on what to include in his contesting
survey, I was one of the ones who suggested asking the question about
meaningful exchanges. My reason was that I think that rewarding copying
skill in contests would make them more fun. Right now, about all you have
to copy is the callsign, and power (generally only a choice of a few
variables) in the ARRL.

To me, the Sprints are so much fun because of having to copy everything
correctly at the risk of losing the QSO. While I haven't made many of the
Internet Sprints, the variable name makes it even more fun. Serial numbers
provide the same purpose in the vanilla Sprints and SS/WPX/WAE etc
contests, with the side benefit of seeing where your competition is, but
copying numbers gets kinda boring - reminds me of W1AW code practice when
they would transmit the Brass Pounders League standings.

Grid Squares are a nice combination of alpha/numeric, and it would be a
nice diversion to see where your responses are coming from. There would be
no intent to use them as multipliers - simply as a variable exchange
parameter to make copying the exchange correctly a little harder. As such,
they are inferior to serial numbers in that they are constant across bands,
but hell, sunspots are down and the talk on our contesting club (PVRC)
repeater is mostly about VHF contesting and grid squares anyway!

Harder exchanges (along with log checking and score reductions) would only
make  the gap between the cream and the crop widen - this would do nothing
for equalization, and it shouldn't. Since grids wouldn't be used as
multipliers, scores wouldn't change nor strategies.

John

John Pescatore
GTE Government Systems
Rockville, MD
jtp1 at gte.com