[Fourlanders] Fwd: New VHF contest rules

Fri Jan 2 02:01:27 EST 2015

I totally agree, Jim. Most of us know how Wayne works...

But then the following from Ward Silver was posted on the VHF Contesting
reflector which sheds a much brighter light on this rule change discussion
and I now retract my previous comment about tasking Doug with any
explanation..I think it's all explained here >>>>

With respect to the new categories, there's nothing particularly odd about
the timing.  The changes approved in January of 2014 (and publicly announced
in board reports) have just taken a while to work their way through an
over-burdened system.  Here's my take on it - not official, I'm not staff, I
just edit contest writeups and help shovel on various projects :-)

The ARRL Board Programs and Services Committee approved the addition of
Single-Op Unlimited categories to *all* ARRL contests at the January

2014 meeting.  This was based on a recommendation in 2013 by the CAC that
was approved by the Awards Committee, THEN passed to the P&SC which THEN
passes it back to staff.  Here's the report:

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/About%20ARRL/Committee%20Reports/2014/January
/Doc_16.pdf

Note that the CAC recommendation (all reports are online at

http://www.arrl.org/committee-reports) only referred to HF contests but the
P&SC extended that recommendation to *all* ARRL contests.  Note also that
while the P&SC report refers to the category names as "Assisted", the actual
word used in the titles is "Unlimited".

Yes, it would have been nice to have this all announced and implemented a
year ago but about the time of the P&SC directives in January, the ARRL
Contest Branch Manager abruptly abandoned ship, leaving a rather large
backlog and no one to manage any of the existing processes, much less add
new categories.  KX9X, N1ND, and I shared those duties during the
replacement process and the current manager W1MSW was hired and started work
in July.  Matt has done an awesome job getting caught up and making sure all
the processes are working as well as they can.  And there was this
Centennial thing right in the middle of that, as well.  

Part of his catch-up job has been to update the rules to include the
previously approved categories and this has now been accomplished with the
January VHF Contest being the final one to get the new SOU categories.
Without the unexpected personnel turnover, this would have been announced
and implemented in early 2014 and the timing would not have been an issue.

The ad-hoc committee was not approved until the July 2014 board meeting, six
months after the extension of SOU to VHF+ contests was approved.  

Here's that report (see page 2):

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/About%20ARRL/Committee%20Reports/2014/July/Do
c_16.pdf

Now...as to the ad-hoc committee's potential rule changes.  The first part
of this email should give you some idea of the speed at which changes occur.
Anything the ad-hoc committee comes up with will have to be placed on the
agenda for the P&SC committee's next meeting.  The recommendations of the
P&SC committee will then have to be approved by the Board at *their* next
meeting.  If I am correct in understanding the process and assuming no
report from the ad-hoc committee has been delivered, no rule change decision
could be made by the board until July at the very earliest and even next
January is probably optimistic.  

Furthermore, a comprehensive set of changes will likely require changes in
data processing at HQ and that will have to get in line with everything else
ARRL IT has on their plate in a very tight budget year.

In my opinion, VHF+ rule changes will happen - but it will be a while before
they are actually implemented just because of the way governance happens in
the ARRL and because of limited IT resources. To stay up to date and prevent
surprises, watch for the various committee reports as they come out to find
out what staff is being directed to do, status of ongoing projects, and if
there are any other dependencies on budget or resources to get them done.

73, Ward N0AX

  _____  

From: Jim Worsham [mailto:w4kxy at bellsouth.net] 
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2015 1:40 AM
To: Ron Rogers
Cc: <whensley11 at comcast.net>; Fourlanders
Subject: Re: [Fourlanders] Fwd: New VHF contest rules

I am not going to comment on these new rules one way or the other.  I will
say that, having worked with N6NB on the VUAC back in the day, if he is
against these new rules it is because it somehow hurts or disadvantages his
VHF contest operations.  Wayne is interested in what effects Wayne not what
is good or bad for VHF contesting.  Just so you know.

73

Jim, W4KXY

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 1, 2015, at 12:30 PM, Ron Rogers <ww8rr at charter.net> wrote:

Doesn't appear this will affect our W4NH Mult-Op operation in Jan. But it
would be interesting to have our Director Doug, K4AC, comment about what
approval process this latest set of rules changes actually went through
before being enacted.

Ron

WW8RR

  _____  

From: Fourlanders [mailto:fourlanders-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of
whensley11 at comcast.net
Sent: Thursday, January 01, 2015 11:22 AM
To: Fourlanders
Subject: [Fourlanders] Fwd: New VHF contest rules

For those that don't subscribe, this from the VHF reflector.

Happy New Year, everybody!!

Kim - WG8S

  _____  

The new rules for the January VHF contest, just published online yesterday
(12/31/2014), are very interesting--and very different from the rules
proposed by ARRL's board-level Ad Hoc Subcommittee on VHF Revitalization in
November.  The ad hoc committee requested feedback from the field with a
Dec. 15 deadline.  The proposed rule revisions and member feedback were to
be considered by the ARRL Programs and Services Committee at a meeting just
before the annual meeting of the full ARRL Board of Directors in
mid-January--or so I assumed from what I read.

Meanwhile, someone (presumably the headquarters staff) drafted new rules and
put them into effect for the January VHF contest.  The new rules create
three new entry categories: single operator unlimited high power, single
operator unlimited low power and single operator unlimited portable.  This
will bring the number of categories in the January VHF Contest up to 13.
During the years when the largest percentage of licensed amateurs in the
U.S. participated in VHF contests, there were only two categories (single
operator and multioperator).  There were only six categories as recently as
2007.  "Assistance" will be permitted in the new "unlimited" categories but
forbidden in the other single operator categories.  Any rover who uses
assistance will be placed in the unlimited rover category where scores
cannot be counted in the club competition.

In contrast, the rules proposed by the ad hoc committee would allow any
operator to use assistance, regardless of entry category.  No new categories
were proposed.  Rovers in any category were to be allowed not only to use
spotting assistance but also to do such things as announce their arrival in
a new grid square on a repeater, on the internet, etc.  Rovers in the 10 GHZ
and up contest already announce their arrivals at new places on repeaters,
at least in California and nearby states.

There's certainly room to debate the merits of the staff-written version of
the rules as opposed to what the board-level committee publicly proposed.
My own opinion is that there are already too many categories in VHF
contests, including several that attract only a few participants.  I don't
think adding three more categories for assisted single operators is the
answer.  I think it's time to allow modern forms of assistance such as
spotting across the board.

But what's more interesting to me is that the new rules seem to have been
adopted before the board-level Programs and Services Committee or the full
Board of Directors could meet and consider the issue.

This gives me a real sense of deja vu.  I'm not a member of the current ad
hoc committee, but I was attending ARRL Board meetings as an elected vice
director in 1991, when two very important changes in VHF contest rules were
implemented without any discussion at a board meeting (unless I slept
through the whole thing).  League Lines in the May, 1991 QST announced two
new categories in VHF contests:  limited (four-band) multioperator and
rover.  Until then, all multioperators were in one category and rovers were
treated as single operators (with their scores in various grid squares
listed separately).  Hindsight tells us that the limited multioperator
category caused a large drop in activity on the higher bands and took away
incentive for groups to upgrade their stations to new bands.  It did, of
course, create a way for smaller multioperator groups to win without having
to compete with the best-equipped groups in the northeast.  And the rover
category led to all sorts of controversy--and four major rule revisions over
the ensuing 20 years.

Whatever the merits of the new rules, I wish rule changes of this magnitude
could be formally discussed at the ARRL board level, or at least by a board
committee, before being enacted.

73, Wayne, N6NB

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