[CQ-Contest] How many hours do SOAB entrants actually operate?

[David Gilbert]

Why are there "too many" categories now?   It's not like participants 
are segregated on the playing field ... we all send the same reports and 
work the same frequencies in an almost totally transparent manner.  
Nobody can tell which category we are in until after the contest, so 
please explain the downside of having lots of categories.  We don't get 
money for placing high, and I'll bet most of us don't even care about 
certificates.  Contesting is purely a hobby and all we care about is 
competing on a reasonably equitable level.

The ONLY downside I can see to having additional categories would be 
whatever amount of extra work it caused the sponsors.  Other than that, 
I don't see how anyone gets much of a feeling of accomplishment for 
beating competitors that didn't even play the whole game.  Certainly the 
48 hour guys should feel great about beating other 48 hour guys, but the 
overwhelming percentage of the players they beat didn't even really 
compete with them.  It's not even an endurance contest if it doesn't 
apply to more than 90% of the entrants.

So what's the downside to additional categories if they represent a 
significant percentage of the participants?    Please be specific.

Dave   AB7E


On 3/31/2013 7:34 PM, somata90924 at mypacks.net wrote:
> Just how many catagories do we want?  There are too many now.  Lets make it a Low Band /High band entry-- 160,80,40, (Lowband)....then let's make that assisted, non assisted, then lets make that LP/HP, then lets make that rookie or non rookie, now do they use a beverage or not?.... Non Beverage or no beverage,,,JUST how many catagories does one need?
>
> Joe, w6vnr
>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: David Gilbert <xdavid at cis-broadband.com>
>> Sent: Mar 31, 2013 2:18 PM
>> To: cq-contest at contesting.com
>> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] How many hours do SOAB entrants actually operate?
>>
>>
>> Why would all the 24 hour guys work the first 24 hours of the contest?
>> That doesn't make any sense at all.   Much more likely is that they
>> would try to pick hours that optimized propagation for contacts and
>> multipliers, and that would be different for every operator because of
>> different QTHs ... especially when you take into account different band
>> preferences.
>>
>> It seems to me that a 24 hour category would essentially replace
>> potentially unhealthy (fatigue, circulation, cycle disruption, etc)
>> butt-in-the-chair boredom with additional degrees of freedom from a
>> strategy point of view.  Particpants would have to choose their hours
>> carefully to maximize rate and multipliers taking into account both
>> propagation and prime time hours on the other end (which don't
>> necessarily overlap depending upon the band).  They'd have the
>> opportunity to tailor their hours to wring the most out of the
>> capabilities of their antennas (not everyone has cannons on every band),
>> and they'd have the opportunity to work in sleep periods that would
>> allow them to chase key multipliers during hours they might normally not
>> operate.
>>
>> It seems to me that a 48 hour contest where fully 90% of the
>> participants operate less than half that time is not really a 48 hour
>> contest anyway.  In any case, for the great majority it isn't a test of
>> skill ... it's a test of endurance.  Those are two radically different
>> things.  Adding a 24 hour category would simply recognize that fact, and
>> it would only be necessary to add it for SOAB and SOAB(A) since almost
>> by definition the single-band and multi-op entries don't really need it.
>>
>> Based upon the data I could easily foresee that the 24 hour categories
>> would become the most popular by far .... so how does that become a bad
>> idea??
>>
>> 73,
>> Dave   AB7E
>>
>>
>>
>> On 3/30/2013 6:35 PM, Tom Osborne wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> But, what if all the 24 hour guys operate the first 24 and then quit?  That
>>> would make for a boring weekend for the 48 hour guys.  73
>>> Tom W7WHY
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>