[CQ-Contest] Re:club radius discussion - Florida Spin

[Jim White, K4OJ]

With solely self motivated ends solely in mind I encourage anyone with any
ideas on a different way to delineate club territory to chime in...

For those new to my personal pet peeve, here goes (old timers thanks for
your patience):

I live in Florida, and our club, the Florida Contest Group, is a medium
category competitor.  With the ARRL's 175 mile circle on top of Florida no
matter how you land the center of that circle,  two things happen, you end
up with at least a third of the circles area in the ocean(s)......and you
end up having two of the largest metropolitan areas of the state unable to
join together completely as a club.....i.e. Jacksonville's and Miami's
suburbs cannot both fit inside the circle.  

So, when you announce you are starting a contest club and you get some
feedback from Hams in Miami and you say - ok I will make my circle include
Miami's South Dade County hams...what happens then?

I tell you what happens, you piss off the guys in Jacksonville.  

It happened!

While it has a very large ham population, Florida is not exactly overrun
with HF contest enthusiasts.  But there are now two contest clubs in
Florida....why????? 

Take a look at some of the club scores from the past year and you will see
two sets of scores which if they were married together would result in an
excellent cumulative effort.

As I said, my own personal motivation for seeking a different method for
calculating club turf is solely to make it possible that the Florida
Contest Group could have members in both Miami's and Jacksonville's suburbs
(to meet the  ARRL 175 mile radius requirement).....

If you have a new idea on calculating how to make the determination of a
club's area,  I am all ears....please do not start telling us reflector
readers (again for you newcomers to the contest reflector) that if somehow
things are changed then the Northeast will metamorph into a coastal based
club, the NECC like the Borg assimilating the YCCC/FRC/PVRC, etc-  married
into an unstoppable force, why resist them?

Any new ideas on this?  Thew ARRL CAC was willing to hear my ideas but I
could not come up with a way to push a radius into an all FL encompassing
"envelope". At least one whose methodology was easily
calculated/communicated.  Unfortunately the currently hot at the time grid
squares are not all of equal area so you cannot say well it is equal to "X"
grid squares....don't try that approach...

Any thoughts you have on this matter will be well received by myself this
weekend at the Crowne Plaza.  Hope to see you there, I will be the guy with
the button.

73,

Jim, K4OJ

President, Florida Contest Group - visit our website at:

http://www.4w.com/deemer/fcg.htm


The Florida Contest Group sponsors the Florida QSO Party, check out the FQP
website@:

http://home1.gte.net/wd4ahz/fcg/ssqp.htm


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