[CQ-Contest] Fish in a barrel

[K7LXC at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/7/00 2:23:12 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
w4an at contesting.com writes:

> The "spirit of this contest" dictates that you don't go to KP4 or KP2 to
>  win SS.  It ain't right.  It's why none of the usual suspects do it.  The
>  victory is hollow and meaningless given the lack of competition.  If you
>  really want to win the SS and do it with pride, get a plane ticket to
>  Dallas or New Orleans.

    Isn't part of 'winning' a contest (or whatever benchmark you want to use, 
i.e. betting your last year's score, beating your buddy across town) coming 
up with a strategy that'll allow you to do it? I've always thought that it 
meant something like picking a category I'm competitive in (i.e. SS low power 
phone, 15M single-band, etc.). 

    In any contest there are locations with advantages and locations that 
won't win no matter how dedicated you are. That's why DXpeditions go to the 
Carribean, AF, etc. SS is another contest that has a couple of *prime* 
locations. If I could, I'd participate down there myself. 
>  
>  Given that this endevour boils down to being nothing more than the respect
>  of your peers, I would like to respecfully submit that cracking the top-10
>  in SS from W1, W2, or W3 land is 100 times more impressive than winning
>  the contest from KP4.  I am sure I'm not the only one tuned in to this
>  frequency.

    I agree especially that W1, W3 and W3 are *not* SS competitive. But how 
is this any different that the SS high power box scores where typically 50% 
of the winners are guest ops? Is anyone but "the usual suspects" going to 
win? Forget about it! 

    I defer to Bill's perspective as one of the usual suspects and a 
respected world-caliber competitor but his is different than mine. 

Cheers,   Steve    K7LXC


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