[CQ-Contest] Distance-Based Scoring

[W0MU]

Maybe the ARRL should take his advice and start promoting these regional 
winners and DE-emphasing the overall winner.

Does coming in 1st place Rocky Mountain mean anything when you finish 5 
million points behind the Atlantic winner.

This sounds more like lets give everyone a ribbon and a trophy and lets 
go on our way.

There will never be a 100 percent fair contest but we fail by not even 
trying to make it better.  Is this simply a case of East coast bias and 
influence and the old boys club getting in the way of progress.

There sure seem to be a lot of folks outside the Atlantic area that 
would appreciate some consideration to changing things up in DX contests.

On 5/26/2015 4:17 PM, Alan Dewey via CQ-Contest wrote:
> I agree with Ward on this one.  The ARRL CAC looked at distance based scoring in minute detail a while back for ARRL DX and concluded that it was not the way to go.  There were just too many disparities with propagation.  Our recommendations were more along the lines of regional based scoring as suggested below.  Sure one could argue that regional based scoring  waters down the competition and results in too many awards but the reality of the situation is that comparing scores between areas with drastically different propagation to the high mult / highly populated areas of the world also has problems.
>
> 73,
>
> Al, K0AD
>
>
>
>
>   
>   
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ward Silver <hwardsil at gmail.com>
> To: cq-contest <cq-contest at contesting.com>
> Sent: Tue, May 26, 2015 4:20 pm
> Subject: [CQ-Contest] Distance-Based Scoring
>
>
> In any contest on bands for which there is a skip zone, distance-based
> scoring
> will not work.  Imagine how hard it is to work a station on 10
> meters 200
> miles away by backscatter compared to, say, 2500 miles away
> by F2 skip.
> Distance-based scoring works on 160 and 80, sometimes it
> would work on 40,
> mostly it won't work on 20-10 or 6 meters.  It might
> be worthwhile on 2 meters
> and higher-frequency bands.
>
> Nor is there a handicapping system that equalizes
> the vagaries of
> propagation between wildly different locations that is not in
> itself
> wildly complicated.  Believe me, I've tried over the years to imagine a
>
> system that would actually work.  They would have to be redesigned every
>
> single year and then be adjusted based on propagation during the actual
>
> contest.  Perhaps there's a doctoral thesis or two in there but not a
>
> contest scoring system.
>
> My opinion is that regional-based reporting and
> operator comparison
> works a lot better and is actually close to comparing
> apples to apples.
> The WRTC qualification systems move in that general
> direction although
> for really big regions (Africa, Oceania, etc) there isn't
> enough
> granularity to achieve the desired purpose. Think about a sort of RRTC
> -
> Regional Radiosport Team Championships.
>
> If we put the amount of energy
> spent chasing impossible weighting and
> scoring systems into recognizing the
> really great efforts and
> accomplishments among regional peers, it would
> benefit everyone. Sponsor
> a regional plaque or a regional competition or
> contribute a regional
> writeup to the sponsors or create a regional rating
> system - all quite
> doable, costs little, promotes the contest, recognizes good
> efforts -
> what's not to like?  Of course, that would require *us* to do
> something
> instead of the sponsors :-)
>
> 73, Ward
> N0AX
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