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

[john at kk9a.com]

Stew Perry is a 160m contest. On top band the difficulty of making a QSO
generally increases with distance. Distance based scoring to some degree
will even things out for those that live further from the large population
areas. This is not true on other bands where making a 3000 miles QSO can
be easier than a 300 mile one.  During sunspot minimums while operating
from Aruba, I recall listening to LU and PY stations running U.S. for
hours when I could not hear a single station that they were working.

There is an incredible amount of activity in the CQWW contests. I do not
recall ever running out of stations to work.

John KK9A - W4AAA


from [Jim Brown]	[Permanent Link][Original]
To:	cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject:	Re: [CQ-Contest] Why some Caribbean Islands compete as South
America at CQWW and other contests


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