[CQ-Contest] CQWW Committee Restructured

Sat Jul 23 16:30:46 EDT 2016

Ward has suggested an attractive manner to obviate the sometimes divisive topic of leveling the geographic playing field for contests; e.g. for us U.S. residents, it may  be as simple as choosing to bin participants by CQ regions. In short, the "advantage" of east coast over west is removed.

If the goal(s) are to recruit new contesters, provide an arena where propagation and geography are removed from discussion (simply 'cuz it's just too darn difficult relative to a "leveL playing field in contests) AND we want to encourage more participation there is one additional subject area available for "tweaking" - antennas.

If Ward's suggestion comes to fruition, IMHO, three components to "competing in a contest" remain:

#1 - the operator ..... I am too old to have my BIC for 24 plus hours, I doubt if I could master SO2R and my CW receive speed just isn't what it was 58 years ago ---- I will, probably, never post a competitive score based on being considered in the upper CW ops echelon(s) BUT I consider myself in the mid-level area of experience and ability to be competitive for 6 or more hours at a time.

The "advantage" goes to the younger crowd and there's 'nuthin we can do about it.

#2 - the antenna .... to be talked to below.

#3 - the equipment.  You purchase or build what you can - the competing op(s) who utilize K3s rigs will have an edge over those of us with "mid-level"equipment but I suspect that "edge" isn't all that great. 

The advantage goes to the op with discretionary resources > you or me....'nuthin we can do about it. 

The transmit antenna, however, is one area where a little "tweaking" can provide us an area to remove the advantage of a few over many. I can't be competitive, during a 160 meter contest, with the op who sports a phased array nor can I compete on the high bands with the op sporting yagi/beam arrays. I can't be competitive simply 'cuz I don't have the space for 'dem nifty antennas. 

I can be competitive if other ops are sporting the same kind of antenna as I ----- a non-rotatable wire antenna OR, even, a non-rotating gain antenna!

Here is an example of antenna discriminator I introduced to QR ARCI contests:

Antennas:
Entry may be A1 or A2

A1: Single Element Antenna

If you are using a single element antenna such as a dipole, inverted V, loop, or a vertical you can enter the A1 category. ( Note that with a vertical you can have as many radials as you want but only one “vertical” element. If you are employing an A2 category antenna that is not steerable or rotatable, mechanically or electrically, you can enter the A1 category; i.e., you can enter as an A1 category with a gain antenna as long as it's not rotated.

A2: Multiple Element Antenna or rotatable antenna

If you are using a multi element beam, phased vertical array, or any antenna that can be rotated, mechanically or electrically, you are in the A2 category. 

A simple approach to provide relief for the many of us who deploy simple wire antennas.

Note: the North American QRP Contest Club utilizes a similar approach to binning entries by antenna category.

Some food for thought.....71.5/72 de Jim Rodenkirch K9JWV

_______________________________
From: CQ-Contest <cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com> on behalf of Ward Silver <hwardsil at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 22, 2016 10:52 AM
To: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQWW Committee Restructured

> As for CQWW, those of us here in Asia who have a perennial propagation
 > disadvantage have no chance of winning any of the big boy categories.
Yet
 > if you look at score submissions of the last few years, you will
observe an
 > upward trend. This is largely because ops are getting on air for fun,
not
 > for winning. The serious efforts are largely focused on doing well in
Asia
 > standings than World standings. All this with the current rules.

And there we have most of a very workable solution - compete regionally,
report regionally, recognize regionally.  Thanks, Prasad.

Trying to come up with some kind of a complex numeric way of equalizing
out propagation and geography is simply not workable. There are too many
dependencies over which a point system has no control.  Nor can it
respond to day-to-day propagation variations.

The CQ WW committee already has its hands overly-full dealing with the
worldwide data set - and they do a great job with that!

My advice for those who care is to create regional competitions and
reporting so that the best efforts from a particular region can be
appropriately recognized and encouraged.  The scoring data and even the
logs are public - there is no reason this can't be done.  How about the
California Cup?  The East Asia Challenge? The Black Hole Bouquet?
Regional reporting allows stations to compete against peers - which
causes most of the perceived unhappiness.

73, Ward N0AX

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