[CQ-Contest] Competing in the Daylight - Making it Happen

[K3BU@aol.com]

In a message dated 10/13/2005 8:08:17 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
guy_molinari at hotmail.com writes:

>>1)  A rock solid ISP/Hosting environment with 24x7 monitoring and a good
connection to the Internet backbone.   I would need about 3-4 Intel servers
running the Linux O/S.   I would also need a load balancer (F5, local
director) or another server that can function as a load balancer.   By
clustering 3-4 servers there would be redundancy in case one server should
fail.<<

Uhm, can we get all this idle, latent power lurking out there to get the 
contest results out in the outrageous time sooner than 9 months "result pregnancy" 
first?

We now have the logs done, submitted in 24 hours, we can submit them in 30 
seconds, we have to wait for results 9 months, for certificates and plaques 2 - 
5 years, and we want to "contest in the daylight", while archaic scoring 
structure prevents contesters from their "regular" home QTH to make it into the top 
ten. You gotta be D4B, HC8N or go to AF/SA to win. Where is the incentive for 
Joe Ham to get serious about contesting if he can't take his FT9000000 South, 
or local zoning prohibits anything besides broom stick outside?

Wanna work on making contesting better, more attractive, more fun?
Here are some ideas I can think of:
1. Eliminate 3 QSO penalty.
2. Eliminate Af/SA continental advantage, everybody gets 3 points for QSO
3. Even for own country QSOs (why penalize populous countries?)
4. Post the logs and UBN on Internet after the deadline.
5. Get the results out ASAP
6. For suspected cheaters, have "inspectors" to pay a visit during the 
contest, to see what's cooking. (possibility of that enough to keep "clever" 
contester more honest).
7. More publicity for contest and results, not like QST replacing it with 
pictures of shack on belt "ham" in the parking lot.
8. Whatever, including silly ideas that can make it better, more attractive 
to participate. Changes should be in the direction of increasing scores in 
order to keep the all time records meaningfull and beatable.
9. Oh, and keep Contest Reflector reflecting and not long delaying. (This was 
posted at 9:36 am EST, see how long it takes to "reflect. :-)

Jus' my 9 cents. (I am getting back and care!)

73 Yuri, K3BU.us