[CQ-Contest] Local club radius discussion

[Jim Lowman]

Jim Pratt wrote:
> 
> The main argument in favor of increasing the size of the local club
> circle (currently defined as a 20-mile radius of the club's center) is
> that it is "difficult to find ten good entries within that 20 mile
> radius" for a contest. -snip-
> 
> Our club's 20-mile radius certainly doesn't take in a huge urban area
> such as San Francisco, Los Angeles or San Diego.  The Sacramento Valley
> is still relatively sparsely populated;  yet we have created a large
> number of good contesters and spurred a lot of activity.  Remember back
> 15 or 20 years ago when it was hard to work SV in the Sweepstakes?  Has
> anyone missed that section in recent years?  We take a lot of credit for
> the explosion of activity in our section...

I suspect that it's going to be difficult to reach a happy medium on
this issue.
Much has to do with geography and demographics so, for various parts of
the
country, there will be advantages and disadvantages of both the current
rules
and any proposed change to them.

In this area of SoCal, there are at least three local clubs that would
fall 
within a 20-mile radius of our club.  We have members in common with all
three.  In that regard, the 20-mile rule works out pretty well.

Let's take another scenario, in the same area.  Suppose that someone
decides
to form the San Bernardino County Contest Club.  In theory, anyone
residing in SB
County would be eligible to belong and participate.  However, there are 
communities that are located more than 150 miles from the center of
population
in the far southwestern part of the county.  Now, you get back east, the
same area (> 21,000 square miles) might overlap into several states.

What, exactly, determines the center of the circle for the 20-mile
radius,
especially in the absence of any permanent clubhouse or other meeting
place?

I'm a new member of SCCC, but assume that I would be ineligible to enter
under
that organization's name, since their activities seem to center around
the LA
area, and I'm a good 50-60 miles from there.

No argument implied; just throwing out some material for discussion.

73 de Jim - AD6CW


--
CQ-Contest on WWW:        http://www.contesting.com/_cq-contest/
Administrative requests:  cq-contest-REQUEST at contesting.com