[CQ-Contest] Contest competitiveness

[David Gilbert]

In general, and while I empathize with your concern, I don't think that 
it's very practical to have a restricted antenna category in a contest.  
It's simply too arbitrary to draw the line between all the possible 
permutations without any practical way of judging their actual 
performance, especially when factors like terrain, ground conductivity, 
and nearby structures are considered.  With power levels, we generally 
have fairly discrete jumps in actual usage ... and it is a quantifiable 
and easily measured difference.  Most contestants that are not running 
five watts are likely to be running 100 watts or more, and most 
contestants running more than 100 or 150 watts are probably running more 
than 500 watts.  With antennas, there are LOTS of non-quantifiable 
factors affecting performance in a continuous range.   It doesn't really 
matter if the impact is huge if the ability to realistically do anything 
about it is minimal.

WPX makes an attempt at this with its tribander/wires category, but even 
that has limitations in terms of relevance.  I still hold a call area 
TB/wires record for WPX from back when I had only low wire dipoles 
simply because I live on a long hillside that gave me a very low takeoff 
angle to the high population centers of the eastern U.S. and Europe.  I 
subsequently upgraded to a tower with a couple of yagis, and in multiple 
comparison tests with a nearby ham my single OB16-3 with its 4 elements 
on 20m at 73 feet on that same hillside was consistently better to 
Europe than his triple stack of C31XR's at 40/80/120 feet sitting on 
flat terrain.

I manage the Competition Ladder for the Arizona Outlaws Contest Club ( 
http://www.arizonaoutlaws.net/ladderresults.html ), which sums and 
tracks points scored by members in various operating categories from 
more than 50 contests over a running 12 month period.  I included a 
"Restricted" category to cover members constrained to marginal setups 
(mobile whips mounted on a balcony railing, attic dipoles, etc), but the 
criteria I use is strictly arbitrary and I have trouble justifying the 
demarcation line even to myself.  I can barely imagine the grief a 
contest sponsor would have trying to define and justify a similar 
distinction to a much larger and less understanding user base.

73,
Dave   AB7E



On 9/17/2014 7:37 AM, David Cockrum wrote:
> As I read the responses about the history of low power, specifically 
> 150 vs 100 watts, I think we are missing the elephant in the room.When 
> it comes to factors that help an operator do well in contests at the 
> top of the list should go antennas.We divide competitors in many 
> contests into three categories based on power:high, low, and qrp.Yet 
> in each of these categories the best scores are made by those with the 
> best antenna systems.
>
> For the most part the power categories divide us into groups that 
> correspond to antenna systems as well.The stations with big antenna 
> systems usually operate in the high power category, those of us with 
> lesser systems often operate in low power and QRP categories.
>
> From my point of view I have a small antenna system (SteppIR at 50 
> feet), but I know I have it much better than many others.After every 
> contest in which a relatively large number of "casual" operators are 
> worked, I receive many QSL cards which state the antenna is a "wire 
> antenna in the attic," multiband vertical, or other marginal antenna.
>
> As long as there are communities that regulate antenna height and 
> deeds with restrictive covenants, contesting will continue to have a 
> hard time attracting new blood to replace our aging membership. No one 
> wants to compete in an activity in which they have little chance to do 
> well. Perhaps every contest should have a category for those 
> individuals with restricted space antennas.
>
> 73,
>
> Dave, N5DO