[CQ-Contest] ARRL DX Contest Multioperator Station Guidelines

[Hans Brakob]

I apparently didn’t do a good job of framing my question.

First, we’re not discussing affiliated club competition.

Now, my question.

You asserted that this arrangement gives “more people the opportunity to play”.

I don’t understand how that is true.

To illustrate, I’ll use W0AIH as the M/M that I have experience with.  Typically Paul and Mary would host 15-20 contesters over the course of a CQWW or ARRL DX weekend.  Some would come for a single shift of a few hours, others bunked for the whole weekend and sat multiple shifts, either as a run operator or a mult/spot operator.   They came from a geographic area much larger than a 100km circle.  On average, 6 to 9 chairs might have butts installed at any given time.

For calculation purposes, let’s say that 20 operators would have worked from W0AIH in the 2021 ARRL DX CW test.

Under this temporary arrangement, these 20 operators will now be able to stay home and operate, all under the W0AIH call.  That doesn’t sound like “more opportunity”.  At best it sounds like “break even” at best.

But “break even” is mythical in this case.

1) Not all those 20 operators’ home stations are inside the arbitrarily restricted circle.
2) Not all those 20 stations are “wired up” for remotely sharing their their log. (Even if they were in the circle.)
3) Coordinating “whose butt is in which chair on what band” (even if they are in the circle), including the ability to fill an unexpected vacant chair on the fly (equipment failure?) would seem an immense challenge, and consume the attention of one or more experienced m/m people who otherwise would be butt-in-chair.

Given those and other challenges which I haven’t thunk up yet, I haven’t grasped how this scheme is congruent with your claim of “more opportunity”.

73, de Hans, KØHB
“Just a Boy and his Radio”™
________________________________
From: rjairam at gmail.com <rjairam at gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 25, 2020 7:51 PM
To: Hans Brakob
Cc: n2ic at arrl.net; cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] ARRL DX Contest Multioperator Station Guidelines

A one year exception, an accommodation, just like field day where we
allowed home stations to treat it like any other contest and added
affiliated club competition.

Look at the CQWW results on 3830 this year. Probably just going to be
team RHR and a couple of others, and maybe some who entered M/M to
free themselves from M/S rules. Is that fun?

"As an example, a group of Minnesota Wireless Assn (Est. 1910)
operators could all stay home and sign “W0AIH” for the weekend instead
of using their own personal call."

Except that there will be no dupes allowed, all log software
networked, and realistically one per band. There are 6 bands maximum
they can play on. Multiple signals on each band still prohibited, so
realistically at most 4-5 ops at a time. It will be quite different
from affiliated club competition.

Ria
N2RJ

On Sun, Oct 25, 2020 at 8:38 PM Hans Brakob <kzerohb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> How is that so?
>
> This scheme allows a group of scattered operators to operate from their home station as a geographically distributed “multi op” using a common call sign.
>
> As an example, a group of Minnesota Wireless Assn (Est. 1910) operators could all stay home and sign “W0AIH” for the weekend instead of using their own personal call.
>
> These are the same operators who, pre-COVID, would have gathered at “The Farm” for the weekend.
>
> How does this give “more people the opportunity to play”?
>
> 73, de Hans, KØHB
> “Just a Boy and his Radio”™
> ________________________________
>
> rjairam at gmail.com writes:
>
> > This accommodation gives more people the opportunity to
> > play this go around.
>
>