[CQ-Contest] Is it time to reevaluate CQWW Scoring Rules?

[David J. Sourdis - HK1A]

I like the rules the way they are, but if winds of change are coming:

In my opinion, the best and fairest scoring system would be by QSO distance. Distance covered was the thing in the old days and still somehow the
essence of our hobby: Get information to, and from, far away places. If I make, from HK, 1000 Q's  with EU stations I get an average of 9000 km x 1000 Q's are 9 million kilometers (km) or 9000 Megometers (Mm), another 1000 Q's with US/VE would be, mmm ... 4000 Megometers? And 100 JA would add 140 Mm to the score, that is a point for each 1000 km. Then multiply the total Mm  covered by the sum of country and zone multipliers. This could be easily implemented today and can be run along with the classic scoring system.

To throw in one more rule change recipe, I have this:
-Let's get back to school's geography books and put zones 6, 7, 8 where they belong: in Central America (CA). This would level Caribbean versus Zone 33 discussion.
-Forget about the two-pointers, so contacts between NA DXCC countries are worth 1 point. We would have then NA, CA and SA, three different continents.
-Exception to the same country zero-pointer QSO: Contacts between stations in CONUS but in different CQ zone ( 3, 4 or 5) are worth something  like a quarter? half a point?. That can be set a fair value by statistically studying the scores. After all, continental US contains three CQ zones, remember former USSR divisions.

An excerpt from a fable:
"There were two brothers, one was a farmer who grew corn, and his brother had a clay pottery factory at home.
One  prayed for the rain for his corn to grow up and the other prayed for dry and sunny days for his pottery to dry up and not get ruined by the rain.
It was impoosible for their god to keep both of them happy."

No matter what changes are made, there always will be unfairness.  It is impossible to keep everybody happy.

73

David  
HK1A
EC5KXA
ex-HK1KXA





 		 	   		  
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