[CQ-Contest] Why some Caribbean Islands compete as South America at CQWW and other contests

[Martin , LU5DX]

Good explanation of the current situation Jim!
I really believe that contesting as a hobby has gotten to a point where
more and more people is interested in achieving not a perfect, but a more
leveled playing field, at least in terms of the scoring system.
There will always be things out of control, but that doesn't prevent us
from improving what we can.

To me, there are two areas where improvement is possible and will have huge
positive impact:

a.).Scoring System. (It will reduce differences imposed by geographical
advantages)
b.) QSO methodology. Adopting a QSO / QSY system will bring some of the
magic back to our hobby.

World Wide events should really aim at providing everyone better chances
not only to compete, but also to have fun. It is something really common to
hear complaints about stations not being able to break through the EU/USA
W2W for long hours during the day.

And also, let's not forget that contesting is a sport about skills, and
technology. Not only about big bucks.



73,

Martin LU5DX

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 3:42 AM, Jim Brown <k9yc at audiosystemsgroup.com>
wrote:

> On Mon,11/9/2015 8:13 AM, Ron Notarius W3WN wrote:
>
>> If I'm not mistaken, the basic argument is that a station in
>> "continental" South America, all else being equal, will always "lose" to a
>> station in the "offshore/island" Caribbean station located within the SA
>> continental boundaries.
>>
>
> The fundamental problem is that the guys in PY, LU, CX, and CE have the
> same competitive disadvantage by virtue of their location with respect to
> population centers as do we on the west coast of the USA, and those in
> VK/ZL, and in much of AS.
>
> A contest scoring system based entirely on arbitrary (and very simplistic)
> rules like countries and continents, paying no attention to distance or
> geography, leaves out a LOT of hams that would like to compete but cannot.
> Such rules are DUMB in today's world -- they were designed half a century
> ago by those who lived in the "real," "civilized" parts of NA, and were
> simple enough that scores could be computed by simple multiplication of
> numbers on a piece of paper.
>
> N6TR came up with a FAR better scoring system for the Stew Perry contests
> -- it was so good that ARRL wanted to adopt it, but as I heard it, Tree
> didn't want to lose control of it so that someone could screw it up. I
> don't blame him a bit. Tree's system is simple enough that the
> distance-based score for each QSO is computed by the logging sofware and
> displayed in the log. The only thing the logger can't do is give bonus
> credit for the TX power of the station you worked -- that's done in log
> checking. And Tree's system is far from the only one that could make sense,
> and that could easily be scored in real time by modern logging software on
> almost any shack computer.
>
> Unless or until the contesting "powers" that love the rules because the
> rules favor them wakes up and decides that the rest of us deserve to be
> competitive, those of us outside those favored population centers are going
> to vote with our feet and not take these contests seriously. Those with
> bucks will continue to travel to islands where they have a better shot at
> winning, and to build contesting stations in ME and VY2 so that they can be
> closer to the mults in EU.
>
> THAT'S why there's so little activity from so many countries in so many of
> these contests, which makes it much less fun for the rest of us because we
> run out of stations to work.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
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