[CQ-Contest] encourgaing more entrants in CQWW (was CHECK LOGS)

[Christian Schneider]

K5ZD wrote:

However, there is a very real danger of unintended consequences.  Whatever
time limit is set, there will be some people who operate more to maximize
their time under the limit.  There will be other people who operate less
because they would prefer to compete within the time limit.  It is uncertain
whether this would result in a net gain or net loss of total QSOs, but it
seems counterproductive to have any rule encourages less activity.

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Therefore every contest sponsor who tries this route can do a count like
that of KR2Q to analyze contestants´ operating patterns. Given existing data
there comes an op-time limit that only a very little number of participants
cross. In my counts I found that it drops above about 26 hours in WWDX and
above 18 hours in RDXC which has a 24 hour duration. In WWDX roughly 90
percent of SOAB operate less than halftime. The potential loss with a
halftime category could only be generated by that part of the ten percent
who now are a bit above halftime and may reduce to halftime if there were a
category for. Those having the possibility to operate more than 36 hours
won´t reduce their fun-time. Above 32 hours we are talking about 200 ops. A
fraction of them at the lower end reducing op-time may not make much
influence on overall activity.

On the other hand the potential gain derives from those 90 percent below
halftime. Some/many of them may increase their op-time suddenly being
competitors not participants - providing a big multiplier for additional
activity.

With regard to slow times I suppose there may not be much additional loss as
they already now are mostly populated by those lucky few having longer
op-time possibilities and singleband ops especially on the low bands. And a
halftime-competitor must be active, too, in slow times i.e. to earn low band
multis.

As much as I would favour such categories which accept even people with real
life obligations as serious contesters - it would at least be a better
comparison of results if op-times were added to score lists like in WPX or
RDXC. And btw: Like in some RTTY contests - even a halftime operator may be
free to add additional hours above his limit for checklog-qsos and further
activity if he gets driven away by good condx.

73, Chris

(www.dl8mbs.de)