[CQ-Contest] Challenges vs Teams

[Ward Silver]

Challenges are as old as contesting - the one with which I am best 
acquainted is the Pacific NW Traveling Trophy 
(http://www.wwdxc.org/operating/contesting/pacific-northwest-challenge-cup-rules.html) 
that creates a year-long competition between the OR/WA/VE7 contesters.  
This is how they maintain interest and activity in a propagationally 
"unique" area that rarely has a shot at continental top spots. (There 
are exceptions but we are talking about the majority of contesters who 
don't have big stations.)

What is important is the sense of relative equality and peer-to-peer 
competition.  This sort of organized challenge works best on a local and 
regional basis because of the propagation and scoring variations over 
bigger areas which have been discussed widely for the past few days.  It 
doesn't make a lot of sense for equal stations to challenge each other 
if they are located in widely separated locations, for example.  Rather 
than pursue the unattainable goal of a level playing field, find a level 
spot on the field and play there, instead.

On the other hand, competitions of distributed stations connected over a 
network, compiling a common log, and working as a single team as has 
been proposed can be up to world-wide depending on the rules.  I suggest 
starting relatively simply with two basic categories:
- Distributed multi-single: one active transmitter at a time, all 
operators can receive, perhaps with a minimum time required between band 
changes and a maximum period during which any one station can make contacts.
- Distributed multi-multi: up to six SOAB stations all combined into one 
team with the only restriction being the one-signal-at-a-time-per-band 
(or maybe only one-signal-at-a-time).

It would be a strategic decision how to allocate operator and station 
resources vs time and band.  Do you have six strong single-band 
operations or do you allocate the all-band stations through the day 
based on propagation or does every station try to work everything and 
anything all the time?  Or something else entirely?

Perhaps an on-air team ID is not required - it really doesn't matter as 
long as the team manages the log internally to not claim credit for 
dupes. (We would need to consider what happens when more than one team 
station CQs on a band under different calls...not simultaneously...but 
this might not be an issue and could be part of strategy.)  It should be 
required, though, that the teams post their composite score and 
breakdowns in real-time.  Teams should preregister each member under the 
common name, I would think.

Sounds like fun to me!

73, Ward N0AX