[CQ-Contest] New Mult for SS

[Bob Shohet, KQ2M]

Jim,

Your reply indicates that you not read or understand my brief post before commenting on it.  And then you truncated it and ignored the rest in your reply.  I have put in bold parts of my post to emphasize what you overlooked:

”Umm...  there is NO “advantage” for the East coast (especially New England) contesters in SS compared to the Midwest, Great Plains, South, Southwest or West.  It’s actually the WORST place to be for that contest from a score standpoint.

Any East coast advantages reside solely with DX contests.

I don’t know what rule changes K9YC is talking about.  Perhaps he will elaborate.”

--------------------------

While people can disagree over your assertion that W1 contesters in SS can more easily work the Eastern Canada Mults 15 or 20 vs. a W6, (an assumption which would be largely incorrect), any possible advantage to working TWO or THREE more SS mults is far outweighed by the fact that the same op at a similar station in W6 at a similar qth, can make another 500 – 800 q’s on SSB and several hundred more on CW vs. a similar station in W1.  How you can think that is a W1 advantage in SS advantage vs W6 from a score standpoint, defies belief.  Simple arithmetic easily proves my point.

I happen to know something about operating SS Phone having made many serious SOAB efforts from W1 and W2.  And, while I have not operated from W6 for SS, I have made serious SOAB efforts in SS Phone from both Colorado and Western Washington, placing near the top of the US both times with tribander and wire stations, something that is impossible from W1 regardless of propagation.  It is a hell of a lot more fun to operate from ANYWHERE in the West than W1 in SS!  And it is a heck of a lot easier to work the Eastern Canadian provinces from the West as well!

Now, I also CLEARLY stated the well-known East coast advantage in DX contests, which you did not even acknowledge, instead lecturing me on how unfair it is for A W6 vs. a W1 in the 160 M contest.  Of course East stations can work loads more EU than W6 on 160.  How would it be otherwise?  The East Coast, and especially W1 views the 160 M contests as DX contests, even though we work typically work about about 5x as many stateside as DX stations.  But what the heck does that have to do with SS?

As far as your contention that it is pointless to call anyone east of the Mississippi before a certain time...., that’s all about the operator and station, not about how many points a qso is worth.  To a top-notch operator, EVERY qso matters and the best operators want every single qso and they have designed their stations so that they can hear in multiple directions simultaneously.  Some operators are just lazy and don’t want to “dig” for stations,  but that’s on them.  Others have significant noise that can’t be filtered out or they don’t have directional receiving antennas, but again, that has nothing to do with points per qso, so that claim just doesn’t hold water.  I want to make every qso possible regardless of how long I operate.  And, on the rare occasions when I have a pileup on 160 and EU stations are calling, I am also aware of who is NOT EU and I work them seconds later.  Unless the caller is incredibly impatient (and some are), they can work me easily if they want to.

And then there was this comment of yours:

”Any changes to contest rules that increase the advantage of east coast contesters seems to be OK with HQ!”

That’s a pretty accusatory statement, especially when you did not specify any details about these alleged “rule changes” or when they supposedly occurred.   That made me curious as to what you were talking about, so I asked.  But once again you did not provide any specifics of these “rule changes” or when they occurred, instead just complaining about the point differential of US vs DX qso’s in the 160 M contests. 

I happen to know something about the 160 M contests.   In the late ‘80’s and again in the late ‘90’s, I competed seriously in the ARRL160 and CQ160 DX contests.  I won the CQ160 and placed 2nd once.  In the ARRL 160 I was in the top 2 or 3, three times, and I remember the rules, strategy and point scoring.

I know that in 1986, the ARRL counted DX qso’s as 5 pts vs. 1 pt for US.  So this has NOT changed since at least 1986, 33 years ago.  And similarly for the CQ160, DX qso’s counted 10 pts each.  This has not changed either.  We have had at least ** 8 ** Presidential elections since this point scoring ratio of DX to US has changed in either 160 meter DX contest.  So how many decades ago did the rule change that so offended you?  Your statement implies that there were far more recent rule changes that fundamentally altered the competitive balance of contests, and that simply isn’t true.

73

Bob  KQ2M


From: Jim Brown 
Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2020 1:04 PM
To: cq-contest at contesting.com 
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] New Mult for SS

On 1/4/2020 7:45 AM, Bob Shohet, KQ2M wrote:
> I don’t know what rule changes K9YC is talking about.  Perhaps he will elaborate.

Bob,

Perhaps you (and others who don't understand) should operate SS as a 
guest from W6. AND SS is not the only contest with RAC sections as 
mults. There's ARRL 160, which the east coast views as a DX contest 
working EU, and those of us west of the Rockies view as a NA contest, 
where all the serious stations east of the Rockies are listening with 
directional antennas pointing NE.

Contest rules are made by human beings, and the decision to use RAC and 
ARRL sections is (was) an arbitrary one that may have made sense nearly 
a century ago, but doesn't necessarily now. That decision is a contest 
scoring rule, and it defines how participants will choose to operate. So 
is the decision to make countries multipliers, and there are roughly 5x 
more multipliers available to those operating in the Atlantic basin than 
to those west of the Rockies.

To clarify what I'm talking about, I have a pretty good 160M antenna 
farm, and do my best in 160M contests. Over the past six seasons, I've 
heard seven signals from EU and been able to work two of those stations, 
all during the last CQ160 and this season's Stew. I have learned that 
it's a waste of time to call big stations east of the Mississippi river 
before an hour after EU sunrise. This happens because of scoring rules 
that make a QSO with a country outside W/VE worth five times more than 
one to W/VE.

And W6 does NOT have an SS advantage working deep into eastern Canada -- 
NorCal, where I live, gets a pretty narrow window early Sunday morning 
on 15M where I can work these section IF they are on the air then (and 
IF there's prop on 15M, which there hasn't been much of out here for a 
few years). And as others have noted, propagation from PNW, NorCal, and 
SoCal/SW Az can be very different from each other, just as FL and 
Mid-Atlantic are different from each other and from ME/Maratime VE.

< snip>

73, Jim K9YC