Topband: Error in ARRL 160 contest rules?

[Victor Kean]

> The ARRL 160 contest is not -- and never was -- intended to be a DX
> contest.

I beg to differ.

The quoted statement inspired me to dig up logs from The Amateur Radio Club
of The Ohio State University, W8LT, from 1973, which was the first year that
I
operated the ARRL 160.  I find that we took credit for a YV1 multipler for a
contact with DL2GG/YV5, and not a "DX" multiplier.  So, by 1973, the contest
included an incentive for DX to work ARRL sections.

If I recall, the fact that we could hear DX very poorly from inside a city
inspired
us to badger John Kraus, W8JK, to borrow his radio observatory's 17 acre
site in the country to erect these new-fangled "Beverage" antennas to
exploit their
apparently magical receving properties.  The fact that there was a nearby
3-acre
aluminum plated field (part of the radio telescope) that we could use for
our
transmitting antenna was incidental.

Working DX during this contest has been driving me since the beginning.

Vic, K1LT