[CQ-Contest] Contest Inequities

[k6xx@juno.com]

Ahh, IARU (or whatever it is called this decade...)

Once among the fairest of contests: everyone works everyone, a rudimentary distance-based scoring technique (1, 3, 5 points), and relatively equal zone multipliers. Just about perfect!

Then some bright guy comes up with those $%^&* "IARU HQ" mults. This effectively re-introduced country multipliers and disenfranchised all not located along the Atlantic coasline. 

This problem may be easily reversed as well: either eliminate those foolishly conceived "HQ" stations or simply make them worth, say, 15 points each QSO (instead of 1 point)--but no mult. At worst, score one HQ mult per society (instead of once per society per band). Instantly, fairness is improved significantly.

73 de Bob, K6XX

For the record, my experience in this matter includes entering most of these July contests by whatever name they went by and whatever callsign I had since they began (if we discount the "Bicentennial Celebration" in 1976, which wasn't quite the same, and start counting in 1980 anyway), including one from Europe (/S5 in 2000). There I found that 100W to a random wire from a hotel balcony in Slovenia was sufficient to work nearly as many total mults as could be found with a kW and Yagis from W6, due to the obscene number of European "HQ" stations worked on 160m through 10m. That is not a reasonable effort/result ratio!

I'll try to stop whining now... but this has been building up inside me for years, getting worse month by month as my station grows but my ranking slides. Those absolutely insane remarks about the 160m contests being relatively "fair" pushed me over the edge!

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