[CQ-Contest] WAEDC 2002 new rules

[Bernhard Buettner DL6RAI]

Dear contesters,

Some notes of last weekend's meeting of the DARC Contest Committee.
Thank you for your consideration and ideas.

73 Ben, DL6RAI
WAE-DX Contest Manager
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New Rules for WAEDC 2002

During the regular autumn meeting of the DARC Contest 
Committee on October 13/14 2001, some changes for the WAEDC 2002 
were discussed and determined. The exact wording of the new
rules will be released after the spring meeting of DARC-CC.
There will be seven essential changes to the current rules.

1. Additional multipliers for EU participants
Prefix blocks in the following countries will be counted as separate 
multipliers: W, VE, VK, ZL, ZS, JA, PY and UA9/UA0. The USA, for example, 
will then provide a maximum of 10 multipliers, W0 through W9.
With this change, the historic multiplier rule, which had been in
use for several decades, will be reactivated. This will ease up the 
tight multiplier situation for EU stations and is a means to make 
the densely populated areas (JA, North America) more attractive 
for EU stations.

2. Splitting of the Single OP category into High and Low Power classes
For participants who are taking part with less than 100 watts of
transmitting power, a new category "Single-OP Low Power" will
become available. The markup of low power stations since
the 2000 contest has shown that more than half of the participants
are already running low power. The time has come now to reflect this fact
by introducing a separate category.

3. Markup of the "unassisted" participants
During the mid-80s it was decided to allow the use of DX spotting
nets in general for all participants. In the mean time, technology
has advanced and current DX spots are now availavle world-wide
via the Internet. The opinions of the contesters are split, some
favouring the current liberal regulation, some opposing it and some
even boycotting WAEDC for this reason. Similar to the Low Power 
category, stations which are not using external sources of DX spotting 
information, will be marked with a symbol ('-') in the final results 
listing. If the number of participants will justify, a new "unassisted" 
category will be created later.

4. Abolishing the 10-minute QSY rule for Single OPs.
The minimum operating time of 10 minutes will be abolished for
the Single Operator categories. Still, only one transmitted signal
is allowed at any time and all operations have to be conducted 
by a single person. This change should increase activity on the marginal
bands 10 and 80 meters, as now contacts can be made which were until
now not worth spending 10 minutes for.

5. Non-ambiguous definition of the Multi Single operation
Multi-Single stations may, under certain conditions, transmit
in parallel on different bands. We define two types of stations, 
the main station and the mult station. The main station can conduct 
any QSO or QTC operation and call CQ. It must stay on a band for at least 
10 minutes before it can change to another band. Apart from that, 
one or several mult stations can work new multipliers on other 
bands, without the main station having to interrupt its operation.
CQ calling and QTC traffic is only allowed at the main station.

6. Credit for stations outside the contest
Stations who are not taking part in the contest or do not send serial 
numbers, may be worked for both QSO and multiplier credit. They should
be logged with QSO number 000.

7. SWL Category
SWLs may claim two points for each QSO monitored, if both callsigns
and serial numbers are copied. If only one serial number is copied,
only one point credit can be claimed.

Points which were under discussion and either rejected or did not lead
to any changes were:

- Change or abolishment of the current minimum break of 12 hours for Single OPs
- Extension of the DARC national competition (CM) to support DX-peditions
- Dropping the E-Log requirement for participants over 100,000 points - 
  acceptance will be decided on a case by case basis.
- Shorting the contest to 24 hours (no majority)
- Combining CW and SSB portions of the contest on a single weekend (no majority)

Many thanks for ideas and proposals to: DJ7BA, DJ9MT, DK5TX, DK8CK, 
DL3NCI, DL4NAC, DL4NER, DL5MAE, DL7VZF, EI5DI, G4BUO, K1KI, K1TO, K5KG, 
K5TR, KM3T, LY1DR, LZ2CJ, N2NC, N6TR, OE5CWL, OH1JT, OH1NOA, OH2LU, OH2MM, 
OH3BU, OH6EI, RA3AJ, RW1AC, S56A, UA0WL, UA2FM, UA2FZ, W2GO and W4PA plus
many others not shown.
-- 
[] Bernhard Buettner (Ben)
[]      Mail: Schmidweg 17, 85609 Dornach, Germany
[]  Internet: ben at dl6rai.muc.de
[]    Packet: DL6RAI @ DB0AAB.#BAY.DEU.EU


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