[CQ-Contest] Feb Sprint Time Changes

[RT Clay]

 Western stations are usually going to dominate in wintertime North American domestic contests because of the skip zone on the high bands ("high band" often includes 40m in the winter). But eastern or midwest stations can do quite well in domestic contests during the summer. In the summer there is often short-skip Es on the high bands, and low-band qrn gives eastern stations another advantage since they have more close in stations to work on the low bands. Eastern stations do much better in the August NAQP compared to the January NAQP, although it would be better if the summer NAQP contests were in June or early July when there tends to be more Es. Any domestic contest that is serious about being fair needs to be held twice a year, once in the winter and once in the summer. 

Tor N4OGW

    On Saturday, February 6, 2021, 8:29:14 AM CST, K3TN via CQ-Contest <cq-contest at contesting.com> wrote:  
 
 Always good to try new ideas in this hobby - let's see how a 2300 start works and we can all weigh in to the contest sponsors if we liked the change or not.
Funny how "moving the cheese" tends to cause angst in many - even those who are probably getting closer to the cheese or who don't even like cheese!
I did a tongue in cheek piece many years ago during my first stint as the editor of the PVRC newsletter back in the 1980s/early 90s that was based on the predictable yearly round of west coast complaints about DX tests being slanted towards the west coast and the usual east coast responses that domestic tests were slanted towards the West coast, etc. 
Back then, there were suggestions to move the Sprints earlier but many of the west coast persuasion thought it would impact participation on the west coast because of colliding with dinner time. Personally, I think N5KO and N2IC would be battling for the top two positions even if they operated while eating dinner, or were forced to move to KL7...
All the professional sports leagues have continual tweaking of the rules, good to see same attitude being tried by the Sprint sponsors.
73 John K3TN
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