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

[Chortek, Robert L]

We can look forward to "Stew Perry"....

Bob AA6VB

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 29, 2012, at 3:54 PM, "Jim Brown" <jim at audiosystemsgroup.com> wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Topband reflector - topband at contesting.com
>