[CQ-Contest] CQWW Xtreme Categories

[Jim George]

As much as I respect CQ Magazine and their support of contesting, and the 
experienced and knowledgeable hams on the CQ CAC, I believe they have made 
a serious mistake with the new Xtreme categories. The worst error is 
allowing remote receiving antennas to be placed outside of the DXCC entity. 
That means we will have remote receiving locations available worldwide for 
some participants, some available through friendships, others from 
"rent-a-receiver" arrangements. Please explain to me the value of a 
contester who has a transmit location, either under his ownership or under 
a "rent-a-tower" deal in his DXCC entity, is connected through the Internet 
to his radios, and thus is able to send a strong signal into another 
continent where he also has a "rent-a-receiver." It will become common 
for  North Americans and Europeans to start to work multiple thousands of 
contest contacts in the other ham-rich continent in addition to their own. 
Within five years, these stations will "rack up" three or four of even five 
thousand contacts on each band with the number of multipliers skyrocketing 
as well. Does this excite you as to the future of one-sixty and eighty 
meter numbers? Not me.

Is the future of "leading edge"contesting this, along with the 
machine-to-machine automatic QSOs which soon will be routine from the 
mushrooming Skimmer-equipped stations. Watch for this software to be the 
next hot item!

Some might be pleased with this. This "boy and his radio" is not.

Jim George
N3BB