[CQ-Contest] Combining Contests

[Hank Greeb]

I really like the 7QP and the NEQP, for different reasons.  New England 
is small enough to fit inside many of the western states.

The 7th call area is large, but sparsely populated when compared with 
other parts of the country so it make sense to combine them all.

And, some enterprising fellow did the combo of NE/IN/7QP logging for 
N1MM contest program, and the organizers of the three contests accept 
the entire log from participants and sorts out which Q goes to which 
contest.  Really neat!

One I'd like to see come to fruition is the Zeroland QSO Party - & have 
the 600+ counties count as multipliers!  That would be a "very 
interesting concept."

There probably could be more cooperation amongst states - some, which I 
won't mention here, have perhaps 10 or 20 active stations in an entire 
state during their QSO party, which makes it a very dull event.

As for logging programmes, if multiple contests get popular for a single 
weekend, the logging programmers will follow.

73 de n8xx Hg

On 7/25/2011 3:00 PM, jimk8mr at aol.com wrote:
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:02:50 -0400
> From: jimk8mr at aol.com
> Subject: [CQ-Contest] Combining Contests
> To: n2ic at arrl.net, cq-contest at contesting.com
> Message-ID:<8CE1896DAE6AFAE-11F4-B9CD at webmail-d011.sysops.aol.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Yes, FQP and Dayton traded weekends.
>
>
> The reason not to have combined qso parties is that in most cases mobile activity makes these events. CA not so much, but very much in FL and GA. Many mobiles do both states. K4BAI/KU8E, NF4A, KC4HW, KN4Y, and N4AO are a few that come to mind in the GQP/FQP case. These guys can only do so many miles and so many counties in one weekend. So you greatly dilute their positive impact if you combine events.
>
> That said, a good case could be made for combining events from several parts of the country on one weekend, especially if the events are single day events, where one can be done on Saturday and another on Sunday.
>
> Logging software that supports simultaneous contests would also be a big assist. Such does seem to be evolving into existence.
>
> 73  -  Jim   K8MR