[CQ-Contest] IARU

[Richard Ferch]

You said:


>Tim,
>
>Your map and all the other "amateur" ITU maps are based on the the ITU 
>CIRAF zone map. Even a close examination of your map shows France is in 3 
>zones.

I have never understood this fixation people have on the precise positions 
of arbitrary lines drawn on small scale maps.

A close examination of the CIRAF zone map indicates that it was apparently 
drawn by someone with bad eyesight using a ruler and pencil in a mad rush 
to meet a deadline. Look at the border between zones 28 and 29. Can anyone 
seriously think that the crazy combination of oblique lines running right 
through the middle of several countries on that map was meant to be taken 
literally? If it was, how on earth is someone living in Latvia, Lithuania, 
Belarus, Ukraine or Moldova supposed to determine which side of the line 
they are on? It seems much more reasonable to suppose that this line was a 
sloppy attempt to approximate the eastern border of Poland and the western 
border of Ukraine.

I note that every QSL card I have ever received from anyone in UA2 that 
specifies an ITU zone says ITU zone 29, despite the fact that the CIRAF map 
places all of UA2 on the zone 28 side of that line.

Similarly, it seems reasonable to suppose that the border between zones 27 
and 28 was intended to include all of France and the Benelux countries in 
zone 27. Every QSL card or LotW confirmation I have from F, ON, LX or PA 
that specifies an ITU zone says zone 27, regardless of what the CIRAF map 
would imply.

And in North America, the lines between zones 2, 3, 4 and 9 on the one hand 
and 6, 7 and 8 on the other were surely intended to represent the Canada-US 
border.

The CIRAF map and the ITU zones were originally set up to allow 
broadcasters to specify who their target audiences were. For that purpose, 
it is national and linguistic boundaries that make sense, not arbitrary 
straight lines drawn helter-skelter on a small scale map.

Finally, why are we talking about this topic on this reflector? Because the 
zones are used in the IARU contest. Who are the organizers for the IARU 
contest? The ARRL. How does the ARRL define ITU zones? On its contest web 
pages, in <http://www.arrl.org/contests/announcements/prefixtable.html> and 
<http://www.arrl.org/contests/vev0vy.html>. For the purposes of the IARU 
contest, in case of disagreements between a map (any map) and the 
definitions on the ARRL web pages, what takes precedence? The answer should 
be obvious.

73,
Rich VE3IAY 


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