[CQ-Contest] ARRL sections

[Kenneth E. Harker]

On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 09:20:33AM -0500, Tom Frenaye wrote:
> 
> Sections exist because of the administrative needs of the ARRL Field Organization and any "recent" changes (KP2/KP4, EWA/WWA, WNY/NNY, WCF/SFL) have taken place because hams in those areas successfully organized and presented a case for change.   Nothing to do with contesting.

The case for West Central Florida (for example) was that the major population 
center around Tampa Bay was split between NFL and SFL, with section officials 
in Miami, for example, having to travel very long distances to serve League 
interests in the central part of the state.  Having one section in the 
area also improves ARES coordination.

I believe the case for EWA/WWA was similar - the growing population centers 
east of the coastal mountain ranges were not capable of being adequately 
served by League officials based in the Seattle area, especially in winter
storms when some of the passes close, it was affecting ARES operations.
Perhaps Oregon could make a similar argument, but for whatever reason, they
haven't yet.

Simply based upon population, STX might be a good candidate for a split.  
We have four very large population centers, two of which have been among the 
ten largest cities in the United States for decades (Houston and San Antonio,)
but on the other hand, travel and coordination between those population centers
is not geographically difficult, and most of the ARES operations are either 
very local (tornadoes) or they tend to affect the coastline as a whole
(widespread flooding, hurricanes) so from an ARES standpoint, keeping STX the
way it is might be desirable.

> Sweepstakes just uses Sections as multipliers.    Some are quite small (KP2 has 62) and some very large (Ohio has 6483) but it is roughly reflective of the number of hams in each area.

And how well connected they are.  It's easy to drive from one point of 
Ohio to another - to get from St. Thomas to San Juan probably requires air 
travel in most cases, which makes a good case for separate VI and PR sections.
The same case might be made about the disparate components of PAC, but either
there really aren't enough hams in KH8/KH2/etc. to warrant it, or they 
really don't care and have never presented a case for it to the League.

I'm not aware of any section having ever been created based even in part on
an argument related to Sweepstakes or other ARRL-sponsored contests (which 
use sections for award distribution purposes.)

> W7GG: what "new" Section in Canada are you referring to?   I'm not aware of any.  The Canadian multipliers are the 8 RAC Sections VO(1+2), Maritimes (VE1/9+VY2), VE2-3-4-5-6-7) plus VE8/VY1/0 for a total of 9.  I think it's been that way a very long time.

Newfoundland used to be part of the MAR section until about five or six 
years ago.

-- 
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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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