[CQ-Contest] ARRL November Sweepstakes THIS weekend

[Denis Pochuev K7GK]

Tor,

>When was the last time a station east of the Mississippi (and not in KP4 or KP2) won CW SS high power?
This is a very biased metric of East vs West. If you look at the top ten in the same category, a different picture emerges:

2020 - N9RV, W7RM, NR5M, N5RZ, N2IC       /     KP2M, K5ZD, W9RE, AA3B, N2NT
2021 - K5TR, ND7K, N9RV, K5WA, W7RM, K5PI /     N4OGW, W9RE, N2NT, AA3B
2022 - N2IC, W7RN, W7RM, W0UA, WX0B       /     VY2TT, AA3B, K4RO, W9RE, N2NT
2023 - N2IC, N0NI, N9RV, WX0B, W7RN       /     AA3B, N4OGW, W9RE, K4RO, VY2TT
2024 - KM7W, N9RV, N0NI, KH6J, K7GK, W0UA /     VY2TT, AA3B, N2NT, W9RE

73, Denis - K7GK

________________________________
From: CQ-Contest <cq-contest-bounces+k7gk=hotmail.com at contesting.com> on behalf of RT Clay via CQ-Contest <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2025 6:50 AM
To: cq-contest at contesting.com <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] ARRL November Sweepstakes THIS weekend

The "level the playing field" always meant between stations in your area. In the east or midwest you can do pretty well with just 40/80 dipoles, since nobody there can run productively on the high bands because of the skip zone. In some years even 40 goes long. In the west, you can do pretty well with just a tribander. When was the last time a station east of the Mississippi (and not in KP4 or KP2) won CW SS high power? If you really want to level the playing field east vs west, hold the contest in alternate years in June and November.
In general, I think suggestions for how to "fix" CW SS should not be based on the SSB SS. The SSB contest is really very different. I got on for an hour yesterday to run some stations. I was surprised that I worked very few high qso number stations, and lots of very low number stations. It was obvious that the big scorers still had plenty of new stations to work. In CW SS now everyone works most of the participants in about 1/3 of the contest time.
Tor N4OGW
    On Monday, November 17, 2025 at 06:58:30 AM CST, <john at kk9a.com> wrote:

 In the November Sweepstakes contest there are areas in the US with much
higher activity.  I have never seen a sweepstakes activity map but the
activity does seem to  be in the Midwest and eastern portion of the us.  If
you're inside this area most of your QSO's will be on 40-80m and if you're
outside the area your QSO's will be on 10-20m.  It is much easier to
operate on the high bands, the low band are noisier, have more QRM and even
broadcast station interference plus a lot of casual operators with limited
antennas don't operate 40m and 80m. So does the one QSO per station really
level the playing field?  I don't see any evidence of this.  I just looked
at the score database for SS SSB and the following sections are in the top
75 highest scores: AK, AZ, BC, CO, MAR, MT, ND, NM, NTX, NV, PAC, PR, SCV,
SD, STX, VI, WCF, WTX, WWA. I am not suggesting a rule change however the
one QSO per station does make for a long Sunday, especially in the CW leg
where stations struggle to make 15 QSO's /hour.  ARRL does a great job of
listing scores by division so you can compete with stations in your general
area, more contest should do that.

John KK9A



Tim Duffy k3lr wrote:

<snip> In conversation with Randy Thompson K5ZD, George makes the case that
Sweepstakes remains the most egalitarian contest on the calendar-favoring
smart operators, not just big stations. He explains why the
one-QSO-per-station rule levels the field.

73
Tim K3LR


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