Topband: Why not add power class to SP TBDC exchange?

[mstangelo at comcast.net]

 -------------- Original message -------------- 
From: Paul Kelley N1BUG <paul.kelley.n1bug at gmail. wrote:

> I think this is an interesting idea. In addition to these two 
> reasons, I would enjoy knowing which stations are QRP. I usually 
> don't know I'm working a QRP station unless they go out of their way 
> to tell me. Last year I worked a couple of QRP stations who later 
> emailed to tell me they were QRP and wanting to know if I remembered 
> how strong they were. I didn't. If I had known they were QRP at the 
> time of the contact I would probably have given an RST report. 
> 
> I love the SP just the way it is, but I think this would be an 
> interesting addition. 
> 
> 73, 
> Paul N1BUG 
For the life of me I don't understand why contesters don't send the actual RST. The purpose of a QSO is to extablish 2 way communications and one way to verify this is to exchange some basic information. Exchanging RST will also help in studying propagation and antenna performance and is good feedback to QRP operators like me. Blindly sending RST 599 is just noise.
I know ot will slow things down and make the operators really operate but the challenge will make contesting better in the long run...
Mike N2MS