[CQ-Contest] Why IARU?

[Kenneth E. Harker]

On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 09:24:09AM -0500, Mark Beckwith wrote:

> I was wondering why it couldn't, for instance, be done over 24 hours in the
> CQWW or perhaps some other contest-du-jour.  Mode issues?  Does it really
> come down to this?

Yes, but it is more than that.

One of the wonderful things about the IARU is that it is (a) not a single
band contest, which forces the teams to think about band changes, and (b) 
it is both a CW and SSB contest, which makes it important that a team 
excel at both modes.  The IARU is by far the largest and most active contest 
that meets these two requirements.  

Another advantage to IARU is that it is a big contest without being _the_
big contest.  A lot of the top contest ops like to be DX during the CQWW,
for instance, and asking the top contesters to give that up for WRTC might 
not work.  Asking them to plan on taking their summer vacation in the 
European countryside or Rio De Janeiro or the beaches of Florida makes the 
competition more attractive for the top competitors and judges to attend.

-- 
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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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