[CQ-Contest] New Mult for SS

[Jim Brown]

On 1/4/2020 11:53 AM, Bob Shohet, KQ2M wrote:
> 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, 

My statement was that for SS, my opportunity FROM NorCal for MAR VE 
mults is largely limited to around my sunrise on 15M -- IF we have 15M 
propagation. Obviously stations at all locations chose bands on the 
basis of where they can hit the mults and make the best rates.

(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.

Not quite. The stations must be there to work. Beginning 8-10 years ago, 
PVRC developed a strategy for winning SS by concentrating their activity 
on 80M, where we couldn't work each other, but where there are LOTS of 
casual operators with modest stations that they can work and we can't. 
Perhaps you might have noticed that NCCC hasn't mounted a serious SS 
effort for about that length of time.

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.

ONLY if you assume that sunspots make 15M and 10M available to handle 
the traffic. And, along this line, as bands open from east to west, east 
coast stations set up shop on a frequency, so that by the time the band 
is open three time zones to the west, run frequencies have been 
established for hours, and when we try to set up shop, we have almost no 
choices.

> 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?

Bob, I specifically stated that I was talking about BOTH SS and ARRL 
160, both of which seem to be stuck in perpetuity by whatever was done 
nearly a century ago when the contest started.

> 
> 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.   

There have been many. Neighbor K6XX, for example, told me about the 
history when HQ stations (and associated mults) were added in IARU 
effectively doubled the Atlantic Basin advantage.

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.

Adding those three VE3 mults meant, for example, that a little pistol on 
the west coast needs to find stations with great ops and decent antennas 
in all four sections, not just a single great op with a great station, 
like VE3EJ. John is one of three stations east of the MS I've worked 
during my afternoon during 160M contests running legal limit, and he's 
one of the few VE3s I can usually work QRP.
> 
> 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.  

Which brings up the opposite problem of unfair rules being cast in 
concrete.

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.

I started contesting in 1957 as a high school student, took decades off 
until I again had a station in a house I rented in Chicago, then another 
couple of decades until getting back on the air from a house I had 
bought in Chicago, moving soon after to W6, so my knowledge of what 
changed when is limited. But from this limited observation point, it 
seems clear, Rules changes never happen that reduce the advantages to 
those who have them, but always increase that advantage.

I didn't imply anything, Bob. You assumed what I thought. The concept of 
mults in a contest is a Rule. What counts as a mult is a Rule. How mults 
are distributed geographically strongly affects the fairness of the 
combination of the Rules. When contests start and stop is a Rule. I 
think I remember a time when it was decided that they could start three 
hours earlier so that the east coast could have more time to work EU. 
The difference in credit for a W/VE station gets for a W/VE qso as 
opposed to a QSO with another country is a Rule. The scoring system used 
by Stew Perry and Makrothen where each QSO is multiplied by the distance 
is a Rule. The scoring system used in Stew Perry giving each QSO 
additional multipliers for power on both ends of a QSO is a Rule. The 
scoring system that gives stations on islands designated part of SA 1.5 
pts more per QSO than a nearby island designated part of NA is a Rule.

These Rules strongly influence every decision station builders, 
tacticians for multi-ops, and individual operators make. Everything from 
WHERE the station will be built for those with the bucks to do it.

These Rules SHOULD be modified to make stations in all locations feel 
they are at least part of the same contest! But any such discussions get 
shut down with the excuse that comparisons can't be made to earlier 
contests (as if memory keyers, contest loggers, skimmers, RBN, etc. have 
long made such comparisons meaningless.

But the same folks who refuse to even consider changing those archaic 
Rules are ready to rationalize the addition of multipliers that are 
harder to work for some contesters than others. And that's what this 
discussion about VE mults (and the DC mult added to a few contests) is 
all about.

I love K6XX's suggestions -- the first, make all stations located in the 
European Union a single multiplier. Or, the second, if you aren't 
willing to consider that, assign multiplier credit to JA prefectures and 
VK states, at least partly compensating the huge multiplier advantage 
provided by all the geographically small countries in Europe.

73, Jim K9YC


> 
> 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
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