[UK-CONTEST] 80mcc finetuning (longish)

[Dave Sergeant]

On 1 Jul 2005 at 17:38, Richard Allisette wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> Just returned from the Friedrichshafen beer-fest and London de-tox
> clinic, so catching up with the 80m CC thread. My own feeling is that
> the CW leg is trying to be all things to all men - a concept normally
> doomed to failure. The contest is to be applauded for trying to
> include newcomers to CW, and CW contesting in particular, with the QRS
> corral. However, with the top ten finishers now working more than 100
> stations each leg (and therefore at a rate of more than 1 a minute)
> there is little to tempt those trying to win the contest into the
> corral. After all, if you are running stations at 1 every 40 seconds
> say, you are unlikely to want to spend 3 minutes trying to unravel
> some badly sent slow CW no matter how altruistic you are feeling. As I
> see it, the winners want to win, and helping the newboys is not going
> to this with the rules as they stand. So, how do we overcome this?
> Make the newcomers more attractive to the serious competitors somehow.
> Working newcomers should attract extra points. So, how to identify the
> newcomers? Not too sure on this one, maybe they send QRS after their
> 599 rather than any sort of serial number, saving any blushes if they
> are finding it hard going, or NEW or something. Perhaps they could
> have their own section in the results, though to this would need some
> sort of pre-registration of their intent rather like is done in NFD.
> Alternatively, perhaps there should be an additional half hour at the
> start of the contest open to all but with everyone sending at no more
> than say 12WPM, points to count as in the main contest. That way those
> doing their best to win would need to work as many people as they
> could in this initial QRS period to add to their final tally.
> Apologies if these thoughts have already been discussed by the HF
> Contest Committee but this is a great contest, rapidly gaining in
> popularity. And this popularity is only likely to amplify the
> problems. In my opinion it, or at least the CW leg, needs just a
> little fine tuning. Be interested to hear the thoughts of others.
> 
> 73 Dick GU4CHY

Here in Bracknell we have 3-4 reasonable CW contest operators (but by 
no means in the top category) who enjoy the little inter club rivalry 
in the 'QRP' section (and I never understand why the HFCC does not 
follow ARRL and CQ in using the correct 5W maximum power for their 
'QRP' sections...). We get 60-70 QSOs per leg, which is reasonable 
for QRP (5W) with modest antennas. We also have a few who are less 
proficient and who make a few QSOs but usually moan they can't hear 
anybody going slow enough...

I think the current rules are a good compromise, and I cannot support 
Dick's suggestion for a 30 minute pre-contest 12wpm max slot. But two 
changes I would suggest are:

1. Stricter enforcement of the QRS corral section, which seems to be 
used by more and more QRQ operators. This would encourage more use of 
this segment which some evenings seems to be devoid of the slower 
ops.
2. The overall club ladder is dominated by one or two clubs who are 
able to get quite a large number of stations on for each leg. There 
should be a 'your best 5 stations' rule, as in AFS, to make it a more 
level playing field.

You certainly have to agree that these contests have taken off in a 
way I am sure HFCC never thought they would. So I guess we should 
keep the current rules as they clearly do work.

73 Dave G3YMC

http://www.davesergeant.com