[CQ-Contest] 4 letter Abbreviations

[N6KI Dennis Vernacchia]

Losing dits in the noise of 80 and 160 meters also stinks

not consulting people affected by your changes also stinks

SDGO not SDIE

73, Dennis N6KI



Larry Benko wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I have been watching the comments about the 4 letter abbreviations over 
> the past few days.
>
> I am the designer of the MARAC county abbreviations.  In the MARAC CW 
> contest there are a possible 3077 multipliers and with county names such 
> as Washington, Washburn, Washita, Washoe, Washtenaw or Greene, Greenlee, 
> Greensville, Greenup, Greenville, Greenwood we (MARAC) felt a need to do 
> something about the abbreviation mess we had.  Stations were using state 
> QSO party abbreviations, making up their own, or just sending what ever 
> they wanted.
>
> Considering the requirements I used when designing the list there are a 
> few odd abbreviations.  My criteria were to use 3 letter abbreviations 
> ONLY for the 27 counties that have 3 letter names, uses the actual name 
> for all counties with 4 letter names, have all counties abbreviations 
> start with the first letter of the actual county name, have ALL Madison, 
> Washington etc. counties abbreviated the same in all states and have no 
> 2 counties in the same state able to be confused by the 
> addition/deletion of a dit or dah to any letter.  Given all these 
> requirements and after considerable work and review we published the 
> list.  There were a few compromises such as Hill and Hall, TX which are 
> too close in spelling and a dit/dah error can cause a mistake.
>
> Now with that all said, I really didn't expect that many state QSO 
> parties would use the MARAC abbreviations.  Anyone is certainly welcome 
> to use them but a 4 letter abbreviation for Delaware which has only 3 
> counties might be just a wee bit too much.  The CAQP used about 80% of 
> our abbreviations (the MARAC abbrev. for San Diego is SDGO and not 
> SDIE).  No matter what abbreviations are used it is certainly nice if 
> everyone followed them.  Expecting a 4 letter abbrev. and getting a 3 
> letter one stinks.
>
> 73 to all,
> Larry, W0QE
>
>
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