[CQ-Contest] 2x4 County designators (was Contest Rules)

[Michael Keane K1MK]

At 12:04 PM 10/10/06, Ron Notarius W3WN wrote:
>Bud, with all due respect, I fail to see this as something 
>"imperative,"  at least for the vast majority of single state QSO parties.

"Multi-state" QSO Party weekends were mentioned specifically and 
that's the proper contest.  The negative consequences of making 
changes to well-established single-state QSO parties have been noted. 
Which is precisely why the speculation that standardization was a 
primary reason for introducing new county abbreviations in CQP didn't 
seem very plausible.

On the other hand, consider this example: the first weekend in May 
has the NEQP, 7QP, IndQP and the County Hunters contest all being run 
simultaneously. That mix includes both well established contests and 
some that are quite new. And three of the contests are 
regional/national (multi-state) QSO parties.

In the span of five years, we've seen one set of 2x3 abbreviations 
introduced for NEQP when that contest started up in 2002, the county 
hunters specifying the use of 2x4 abbreviations in their contest in 
2005, and the introduction of another set of 2x3 abbreviations for 
7QP in 2006, plus the previously existing Indiana county 
abbreviations. All for use on the same weekend.

>Trying to force all state QSO parties to change their methods to 
>accommodate the needs of county hunters just seems to be a case of 
>the tail wagging the dog, and it's just not necessary.

In the example cited above, commonality wasn't something that would 
have made life easier on county hunters. It's something that would 
have facilitated the simultaneous participation by contesters in the 
multiple events. As it stands, an extra degree of mental and computer 
gymnastics are required of many participants.

Certainly it would be a very neat feature for logging programs to 
recognize the common variants of the exchange that are in use and 
place the proper codes in the log for each contest.

As would the permissive change by the sponsors of also accepting a 
common Cabrillo format from both in-state and out-of-state entrants. 
That would save participants the chore of having to keep and/or 
generate multiple logs if they wished to submit entries to more than 
one event. That would make for more work for the log checkers but 
less work for the participants.

73,
Mike K1MK

Michael Keane K1MK
k1mk at alum.mit.edu