Topband: [Fwd: Re: The East Coast Advantage]

[Art]

I'm with Joe. I both contest, and DX on top band. There's nothing to

compensate for location location location. I sit around evenings 
listening to (or ON4KST watching) EC stations slurp up the choice DX 
while my ears are recording every last stroke of lightning for 2,000 
miles and little else. It was the same in CA, except there was 3,000 
miles of lightning.

I for one don't even bother to look at east and midwest scores. What's 
the point, to a station west of those areas? (Well, except for the folks 
I know personally) And, propagation wise, who cares? They were in 
separate contests that just happened to occur at the same time.

Split countries large in longitude or latitude into separate entities 
for low band contest scoring purposes. For example the USA could become 
three entities (or 6, if latitude were included). Ditto for example 
Russia, if the same angst over scores exists there. If this were to 
happen then we'd be doing formally what we've been doing informally for 
60+ years: Competing against our peers.

73 Art

Joe Subich, W4TV wrote:
> Sorry, Jim.  Even if contests were scored using grids or 
> fields as multipliers and distance for QSO scoring, the 
> northeast US would have an advantage among US stations 
> and south-central Europe would have an advantage worldwide 
> just because of the distribution of activity (and potential 
> activity).  
>
> Activity density in the Pacific, Caribbean/South America, 
> Africa and Central Asia is just too low for western US, 
> southern US, Central/South America, eastern Europe or 
> Africa (other than the very northern portion) to compete. 
> No objective scoring system is going to balance the 50 - 
> 80% higher QSO totals of the "favored" areas.  In addition, 
> since the "committees" that run most of the major contests 
> are heavily biased to the same "favored geographies" they 
> are not going to make the hard choices necessary in any 
> case. 
>
> 73, 
>
>    ... Joe, W4TV 
>   
> [snip]