[CQ-Contest] Canadian "sections"

[Kenneth E. Harker]

This is an excellent summary.

I wonder if a good solution would be, for the purposes of 
Sweepstakes or other contests that use "sections" for an exchange
or multiplier, to refer to YT/NWT/NU as the "Arctic" section
and use "ARC" as the abbreviation.  This would be similar to
the "Maritime (MAR)" section, which spans several provinces,
but is not appropriating the name of a single province to 
represent the whole.

Or, someone could just decide that YT/NWT/NU are interchangeable.


On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 01:04:34AM -0500, Dave wrote:
> I want to offer a little clarification on the matter of
> Canadian "sections."
> 
> As others have pointed out, "sections" are the geographic
> areas that are the basis of the ARRL and RAC field
> organisations.  Currently in Canada, there are RAC sections
> for NL, MAR, QC, ON, MB, SK, AB and BC.  There is no field
> organisation as such in YT, NT and NU, but there could be as
> soon as someone takes of the job of organising one or more.
> Despite the absence of any field organisation in these three
> territories, they are considered to be one "section" for the
> purposes of some ARRL contests (SS, 160m) as multipliers.
> In other contests, including some ARRL contests (DX, 10m),
> these three territories are each considered separate
> multipliers.
> 
> Someone noted that YT is part of RAC's "Pacific Section."
> This is false.  YT is bunched in with BC for the purposes of
> elections to RAC's Board of Directors, while NT and NU are
> bunched in with Alberta for that same purpose, but this has
> no relation to the "field organisation" or contest
> multipliers.  In that same vein, Ontario is divided in two
> on RAC's board, but is only one "section" in the field
> organisation and for multipliers.
> 
> "Sections" are one class of thing.  The members of the RAC
> Board constitute another class of thing.  Provinces and
> Territories, constitued parts of the Dominion of Canada, are
> yet another class of thing.  Don't mix them up.
> 
> Confusing?  Sure, but there are bigger mysteries in life.
> 
> Why is there no field organisation in Canada's arctic?
> There are only 100,000 people living in a land area of about
> 3.5 million square kilometres, which, for some of the more
> parochial readers here, is five time the size of Texas.
> There may be all of 200 hams in all that space.  Think about
> those numbers: what proportion of the Amateur population
> gets involved in their local field organisation?  Darned
> few.  When they do, it's usually begins with a local net.  A
> net covering such as vast area is anything but local,
> especially when the aurora is nearly always present to
> absorb your signal.
> 
> In short, the YT/NT/NU "section" is a harmless fiction that
> serves only to make a very few contests more interesting.
> ARRL 's contest robot could accomodate the few logs they
> receive from good guys like J. VY1JA by accepting YT, NT and
> NU as legitimate identifiers for this non-existent
> "section."  I bet it wouldn't take five minutes to fix that,
> less time that it took me to write this.
> 
> Dave VE2ZP
> 
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Kenneth E. Harker      "Vox Clamantis in Deserto"      kharker at cs.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin                   Amateur Radio Callsign: WM5R
Department of the Computer Sciences      VP, Central Texas DX & Contest Club
Taylor Hall TAY 2.124                         Maintainer of Linux on Laptops
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA            http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/
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