Topband: November 30-December 2 -- ARRL 160 Meter Contest

[Jim Brown]

On 11/29/2012 3:15 PM, Herb Schoenbohm wrote:
>
>
> Again this weekend the ARRL presents the worst and most unfair 160 
> meter competition ever devised. 

If you think it's unfair from your QTH, try working it on the west 
coast.  West coast contesters have grown VERY tired of participating in 
contests where very experienced contesters operating from very good 
stations have not even the slightest chance of being competitve because 
the scoring rules put us at a 10:1 disadvantage. When I moved from 
Chicago to Santa Cruz in 2006, I began building a station that would 
have been a super station if it was east of the Mississippi, and for 
several years pursued contesting seriously. Each year I entered 160M 
contests, each time I worked all states and added to my list of 
countires worked, and each time I had the top score in SCV, a section 
full of serious contesters. Not because I was that good, but because all 
those serious operators had no interest in a contest they would by 
playing with both hands tied behinds their backs.  Think about it -- 
east coast stations run 100 EU stations, a distance of 4,000 miles or 
less, some more in AF and get 60 multipliers. I run 100 JAs (5,500 
miles) and a few VKs and ZLs (6,000 - 8,000 miles) and get three 
multipliers.  And maybe I find half dozen more mults in the Pacific 
islands, UA0, and HL.

The same thing happens in most major contests -- the guys with stations 
around the Atlantic seaboard have a great time, accumulate great scores, 
and acquire the (underserved) reputations of contesting "gods" ONLY 
because of where they live. And because they are contesting "gods," they 
dominate the councils and committees that set the rules for contests, 
fight like hell against any changes in the rules that might reduce that 
advantage, and go along with anything that accentuates it.  The new 
Ontario multipliers are only one small example -- a far greater one is 
the extra multiplier in WRTC for HQ stations, which essentially doubles 
the east coast advantage by doubling the number of mults, mostly from EU 
countries. I've responded to 160M contests first by running 100W, and 
then after making WAS in a weekend, by operating QRP. I'm passing out 
the SCV multiplier only to those stations who really want to work the 
west coast, who have Beverages pointed this way, and stay up after EU 
has gone to bed.

So what it boils down to is that if you want us back in the game, you've 
got to work to change the scoring rules of contests so that we WANT to 
play. Contest rules are from the dark ages, when it had to be done with 
pencil and paper, so they had to be very simple. Thanks to the ease of 
computer logging and log checking, scoring rules could take many 
possible forms, anything from distance based scoring, or assigning 
multipliers to JA prefectures and VK states, to handicapping by ARRL 
section, state/province. The Stew Perry model is but one (pretty good) 
example. But if the east coast contest establishment insists on 
maintaining a status quo where only east coast stations are competitive, 
and where the rules don't make east coast stations even WANT to work the 
west coast enough to point their antennas in our direction, you're going 
to have to get used to playing with yourselves.

73, Jim K9YC