[CQ-Contest] ARRL DX "Leveling, Handicapping, Equalizing"

[James Cain]

Hank:

Maybe your comments (below) were tongue-in-cheek, but you may be on to 
something.

There is a greater concentration of monetary wealth in the D.C.-to-Boston 
corridor than anywhere else in the U.S. That's good, because it takes a lot 
of money to buy the land and build the station to be competitive in DX 
contests. But it also takes a drive to excel, something that tends toward 
cold, northern climes.

Of course there are world-class contest operators in other parts of the U.S. 
But there's a concentration of them in The Corridor. Part of that is due to 
population density, but that works two ways. The Corridor is a horribly 
expensive part of the country in which to live. One really, really, has to 
want to excel not only to live there but to put up a station. (See --  
Darwin.)

Want to do better? Move. A guy from New Hampshire built a station in Maine. 
A guy from New York built a station on Price Edward Island. Good for them.

Truth be known, it is so hard to operate DX contests from close to the 
Atlantic Ocean ... put up a wire in a tree and those pesky Europeans just 
call and call, layer after layer of them (thank you EU!). It's impossible to 
hear any other DX, like in Africa or the Pacific.

I trust this clears everything up.

Jim Cain
At The New K1TN Superstation
7 miles east of Mountain, Wisconsin

---------------------

"From these data, one can only conclude that the people on the east coast 
are more competent contest operators than us dolts who live in other parts 
of the U.S.A.

"It's kinda hard to conclude anything else, particularly since the
reflector did weird things with the formatting of these data.

"73 de n8xx"