[SECC] GQP Changes

[John Laney]

I am reluctant to disagree with one of my heroes, NQ4I, but I oppose 
multipliers per band.  To the best of my recollection (and I have 
participated in all of them), there is no state QSO Party that counts 
mults per band.  This is a concept of DX contests where the number of 
total multipliers is much smaller.  There is a lot to be said for 
working against a finite number of multipliers even if that is 159 (or 
159 x 2).  A "sweep" couldn't even be conceived ofif there are 15900 
possible mults (or 15900 x 2).

QSO points are awarded per band and that should be enough incentive to 
move people to other bands.  It is clear to me that W4AN during GQP this 
year was moving stations to other bands and people were responding 
without an added multiplier as incentive.  In fact, many of those who 
responded were just trying to help out and didn't send in a log.

I know that, at least on CW, in a state QSO Party, it can become boring 
after a while after you have worked most of the CW ops on a band.  On 
SSB, there are more casual contesters or non-contesters to work.  These 
will not be inspired to QSY to another band for another multiplier that 
they don't need anyway.

I am not opposed to changing to one mult per QTH rather than one per 
mode except to the extent that it will require changes to logging 
software and these are hard to come by since so many of the developers 
of the software are not supporting their product any more or not 
supporting it well.

Stations like W4AN are not really in competition with anybody else (at 
least not at this time) and greatly inflating its score won't make much 
difference.  However, the proposed change would inflate scores greatly 
otherwise and give less incentive to QSO stations in the same multiplier 
already worked on a band.  I see no need to reward stations will multi 
band abilities except by additional QSO points for the other bands.  It 
could mean that people who have limited bands available to them will not 
be able to compete.  And, please let's not talk about single band 
awards.  There isn't enough participation in a state QSO party to 
sponsor and deliver single band awards.  That would only encourage 
people to work only their favorite band and might reduce the total 
number of QSOs available.  I know of no state QSO party that gives 
single band awards.

The theme of GQPs from the beginning has been to encourage QSOs between 
GA stations and non-GA stations on all authorized contest bands.  We 
have never had devices such as single band entries or power multipliers, 
which have the effect of diminishing the total QSOs made.

If you get too many people QSYing all the time, you will have a bunch of 
discouraged hams who have been waiting in line for a county only to have 
that county suddenly moved to another band by some big competitor. And 
that could happen over and over again. To a limited extent that can 
happen now, with multipliers on each mode.  But, the QSY to phone 
usually results in only one or two QSOs and a quick return to the 
original frequency.

I am not opposed to change, as such, except to the extent that it 
creates logging and log checking problems, but the proposed change 
mentioned by Rick and others would leave behind a tried and proven 
format for a format never before used for a state QSO party.

Our strong point in recent years has been the mobiles and many mobiles 
find it difficult to have a good signal on multiple bands.  Even if we 
do, it often requires stopping and changing antennas, resonators, 
jumpers, screwdriver settings or capitance hats and that means loss of 
QSOs while the change is being made.  Let's not kill the golden goose of 
our mobile competition.

73,

John, K4BAI.