[CQ-Contest] CQ WW Scoring System needs revision?

[Rick Kiessig]

Easy: scores are all based on short-path only.

Of course there are vagaries of propagation. This is just a scoring system, not a measurement system.

The goal is to get the EU and US masses to point their antennas away from each other and out toward the rest of the world for more than just a single QSO per zone or DXCC. The goal is not to differentiate between LP and SP, or other modes of propagation. If it helps, you could actually think of LP contacts as bonus points: you were able to contact that distant location when SP paths were closed. More points!

I'm against correction factors, except perhaps by band, to encourage people to spread out and not jam 20m wall-to-wall.

With distance-based scoring, I'm confident we will find as much or more travel to DX locations -- it's just that the particular spots chosen will be different -- and it will take some time to discover the best ones. I consider those things to be good for the sport, not bad.

73, Rick ZL2HAM / ZM1G


-----Original Message-----
From: CQ-Contest [mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of brian coyne
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 8:16 AM
To: Martin , LU5DX
Cc: cq contest
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQ WW Scoring System needs revision?

So Martin how are you going to score all of my morning long path qso's with central and South America, you could throw in JA too. Short path distances can hardly be used when the contacts are clearly long path.

Distance scoring does have merit for Stew Perry which is 160mtrs and there would be a case for 80mtrs too but the higher bands are too subject to the vagaries of propagation. 


It is clear that southern hemisphere stations are at a disadvantage on the lower bands, and on the higher bands too during low sunspot years. There may well be a case for allowing more points to those stations on the lower bands but where could the line be drawn when parts of  those zones and countries are north side of the equator?

Few would argue that the present scoring system is fair to all entrants. Clearly there are favoured areas but  how many fewer travelers would there be to some of those rarer dx countries, causing a reduction in available mults if scoring advantages were removed, travelers tend to be serious guys who want to win rather than visit for fun.

There is no easy solution, despite suggestions we have seen here some which, prima facie,  look as though they could be workable fail  to be viable when given further scrutiny. I doubt that CQWW CC can be persuaded to make any changes, it is as it is, and, as more than 14,000 of us have been content to enter and submit logs in the two events this year showing an ongoing increase year to year the CC will feel under no obligation to make any changes.

With regard to southern hemisphere scoring, for what it is worth, the RSGB Commonwealth Contest, one of the oldest contests on the calendar, has made an effort to address the imbalances of contact availabilities  for Oceania, Southern Africa etc for their team competition   which has been successful in it's objective of providing a more level playing field and encouraged more participation from those areas. The method is described in the exert below taken from the rules.

<i>(a) The team score is the sum of individual adjudicated scores, with all stations located in the southern hemisphere or on the equator having their final score multiplied by a “latitude factor”.
(b) The “latitude factor” will be re-calculated each year based on published scores: for each hemisphere, the highest-scoring team total for each of the last three years will be used to give an overall total and the factor will be calculated as the ratio of the northern to the southern grand totals rounded down to the nearest two decimal places.</i>

73  Brian 5B4AIZ / C4Z.