[CQ-Contest] IARU HF Championship - A Travesty

[John]

And in the old days, when it was still the "radiosport" contest, it was 48 hours long, and you could run 6m and 2m in it as well.  I got my first introduction to 2 meter tropo running FM in the radiosport.  Wish they could go back to the old format, especially the VHF bands.

73s John AA5JG


---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Steve London <n2icarrl at gmail.com>
Reply-To: n2ic at arrl.net
Date:  Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:49:35 -0400

>It's good to see some others speaking out about cheating in the IARU HF
>Championship. Let me see if I can use history to help others understand how we
>got to this sorry state of affairs....
>
>First of all, notice that this is, theoretically, NOT an ARRL-sponsored contest.
>It is sponsored by the IARU. (However, all management is done by the ARRL - more
>on that later). This gives the ARRL a convenient excuse when its members demand
>rule changes ("We can't change the rules, only the IARU can do that").
>
>Long ago, back in the late 70's, there were no HQ multipliers. Only the ITU
>zones counted as multipliers. It was a great contest, except for one thing - the
>international winners were typically from South America - and we're not
>talking about PJ2 and P4, but deep South Americans, like LU's. This upset the
>gawd-given order of the world !  Since Europe only had 4 multipliers, Europeans
>couldn't rack up huge scores by working 40 European countries on each of 5 or 6
>bands !  So, with the consent of the IARU, the HQ multipliers were added. In the
>first few years, the HQ stations were slow to catch on. However, just the
>presence of 10 EU HQ stations was enough to take away the "unfair advantage"
>that South American stations enjoyed. As the years passed, more-and-more HQ
>stations jumped in, and soon the HQ stations were just another country
>multiplier, to be worked on every possible band. In recent years, the winning
>scores have had more HQ station multipliers than ITU zone multipliers.
>
>Now the HQ stations have taken on a life of their own, with fierce and unethical
>competition between countries for bragging rights. This has led to rampant
>cheating. For example, does anyone really believe that in 2005, DA0HQ worked
>2390 unique stations (or, at least unique operators) on 160 meters ?  I have
>heard a recording of the DA0HQ 160 meter operation - a classic case of reading
>calls from a pre-arranged list of DL callsigns. In the same contest, next-door
>neighbor TM0HQ only worked 705 stations on 160 meters.
>
>And here's another consequence of this being an IARU contest --- Some IARU
>member societies have convinced their national, government funded, sporting
>organizations that this is an international event worthy of financial awards to
>their countrymen, should their countrymen be the world "gold medal" winner.
>Might this help some of you understand the impressive (and unbelievable) QRP and
>low power scores ?
>
>So....What can we do about this ?
>
>Some suggestions:
>
>1) If you are an ARRL member, contact your ARRL Director and demand an 
>understanding of the financial arrangements that support the IARU HF 
>Championship. All management of the IARU contest is done by the ARRL - 
>administration, log checking, contest writeup, certificate printing and mailing, 
>QST publication, web administration... Since the IARU seems to have closed 
>financial books (www.iaru.org), it is impossible to determine how the IARU 
>contest is being financed, and the ARRL contribution to its financing. If, as I 
>suspect, the lion's share of the IARU contest is being funded by the ARRL, 
>demand that such funding be cut-off until changes are made to the contest rules 
>and contest adjudication (or eliminate the IARU contest entirely).
>
>2) Enjoy a beautiful July weekend with your spouse, kids or signficant other, 
>rather than operating the radio.
>
>3) Discourage the WRTC-2010 committee (SRR, RZ3AA, RA3AUU) from using the IARU 
>HF Contest for the selection of WRTC-2010 competitors.
>
>4) Your suggestions here ...
>
>73,
>Steve, N2IC
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>
 

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