Interesting to read the different comments so I feel the need
to reply
from the mobile perspective.
As a mobile, I have no need for self spotting. Judging
from the size
of the piles when I get to a new county, someone has
already
spotted me.
I am against having GA counties as mults for in-state
stations. It's
too hard to work many of them from a mobile. Besides, GA
stations
should be working stations elsewhere to keep this a popular
contest.
I see no need for 160 or 6 meters in this
contest.
I like the mults (one CW and one SSB) the way they are.
Having
additional mults by band would result in more requests for a
QSY
and the resulting loss of rate and frequency.
I would like to see the results listed by score /
category and not
by call. It saves having to use the spreadsheet search
feature
to find the other stations in your category. What would
be nice
is to post a spreadsheet so you can do your own sort.
Even
nicer would be to be able to search like you can on the
ARRL
site.
I would like to see the Saturday session end at 10PM
and the
Sunday session end at 6PM. This avoids driving around
in
the dark and gets you into a hotel (or home) at a reasonable
time.
Ending at 6PM on Sunday would be nice. I had a four hour
drive
home to Asheville, which got me home at midnight.
An interesting concept to discuss would be the creation of a
single
operator mobile category without a driver. What would
make this
unique would be that you could only operate 7 out of the 10
hours
each day. This would allow time for changing counties,
without
having to operate while driving. It would also level the
playing
field by not having to compete with a single operator that has
a
driver. The off time would be the time between the last
QSO in
a county and the first QSO in a new county. This would
also
open up the possibility of a mobile taking the time to drive
to an
out of the way rare county.
I like the idea of a ROVER category. The above 7 out of
10 hours
would also work. It also has the advantage of being able
to spend
a bit more time with antenna
installation and driving a bit more to
get to a rarer county that may not be the closest to where
you
just were.
John Getz, AD8J (KW mobile)