[CQ-Contest] NCJ Article RE: Sweepstakes Change Suggestions

[George Fremin III]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 03:12:06PM -0400, Jeff Clarke wrote:



> You make some great points but I have a different perspective as
> someone who has always had a small station. I have no expectations
> of winning  anything nationally and it's an added bonus if I can
> just win my section. 

There are plenty of small stations doing well in the SS. 
Some even win their categories - give it a try next time.

> There seem to be lots of traditionalists out there that don't want
> change. But they are willing to accept SO2R and using spotting
> assistance. Why don't they complain about that ruining Sweepstakes?

Some have - and there are things I do not like about some changes
that have occurred.  

But making it and all band contest would ruin the SS in ways that I 
do not think people fully understand. 


> BTW maybe you can refresh my memory of when someone other than a
> 5,6,7,VI or PR has won either mode? 

This information is online at the bottom of the records. 

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Contest%20Records/2016/2016%20SS%20CW%20%20Records%20Rev%20A.pdf

and 

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Contest%20Records/2016/2016%20SS%20PHONE%20Records%20Rev%20A.pdf

I was not talking about 1st place in my post - I was talking really
about doing well - being in the mix or maybe more broadly making the
top ten.  This can be done from all over the country - just pick a
year and a category and you will see folks (that do this contest
seriously) doing well from all over the country. 

I will concede that in the high power categories normally the 1st
place station is in one of the areas that you mention and this is more
true on SSB but there have been some great performances from outside
those areas on phone and CW in those high power categories.

Low power is usually much more diverse.
As an example in 2016 the low power top ten looked like this:

VA7RR BC
K3UA  WPA
N8II  WV
K9WZB AZ
WR3R  MCD
WS9V  IL
N1DD  EMA
WD5K  NTX
WN6K  SDG
N7MZW WY

And while I do not know what most of those folks have for stations
I do know that K3UA has a dipole.  

If the SS is changed to an All band affair - folks in WPA with dipoles
will not be in the running for the win ever.  And I do not think that
is good for the health of the contest.

We could look at this across all the categories but I think I will
leave that to another day.

I finally got my NCJ this evening and I see that these two folks are
mainly talking about the decline of CW SS.  And I am sad to say that I
am not sure what you do about that - there are going to be fewer and
fewer CW ops over time - there is just no way around that fact.  I
think it is clear there are many ops out there using some sort of CW
decoding stuff so they can work DX and even do contests on CW to some
extent.  I suspect this works well in a contest like ARRL 160 (the
example in the NCJ) but is a lot less fun in SS with the complex
exchange. Perhaps I am wrong. Maybe the CW decoding can get good enough
or maybe is already good enough to make the top ten - sort of like
doing a RTTY contest - and since most of the code these days is
machine sent....

One thing that all contests need to thrive is promotion - even those
that have been around a long time - talk it up.  Write about it get
your club members on etc.


-- 
George Fremin III - K5TR
geoiii at kkn.net
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr