[UK-CONTEST] New CQ WW Category

[brian coyne]

I was starting to think that this site was becoming just about the most boring forum which I subscribe to.
We just had one of the premier contests of our calendar in NFD, this is the RSGB Contest Reflector yet we got only a handful of contest reports and those from the usual faithfuls. To read those soapbox's is much more interesting immediately following an event rather than months down the line when the results are published when the contest is a vague distant memory. Likewise I calculate there must have been at least 150 guys active in CC the other night and how many reports have we seen?
 
What we have seen is a real flurry of postings about contest exchanges which 99.9% of us have used since we began contesting. If guys are technically correct about wordings and insist on being pedantic then change the rules to make it crystal clear then maybe we can discuss more serious and interesting matters on these pages!
 
What is worth discussion is this new 'extreme' category slated by CQ Committee.
Reception by the contesting community is going to be divided as we have seen already for Bob, Paul & Callum. I will come out quite clearly and say that i am in Paul's court on this one - not because I am a Luddite but because I believe that it devalues what is and has always been a great contest. It is all very well to say we can't deny or delay progress. Maybe Roger (SXW) had some inkling of this new addition when he wrote his piece about technology set to sweep traditional operating/contesting aside in the last issue of the CDXC Magazine.
 
Whatever anyone may say our hobby is all about RF, generated and received by traditional means. Let us look at this from the side of the traditional competitor. If in cqww I work k6zzz I expect him to be in z3 when he sends that in his exchange. If he has set up a remote station in Cape Cod operated by landline then he is clearly not in z3. I got z3 in my log but have no idea I really got z4/5. Maybe some would say that doesn't matter but it does.
I am in asia, a long way for 100w to work Ca/Ore/Wa etc. Now I am not going to struggle to look for or work any more z3 stations in a busy contest when I can fill my boots with eu's or usa east coast stns, all worth the same 3 points. That is a detriment to other west coast stations if you add up all we little pistols who work k6zzz and think we (have. technically according to new rules) worked z3. On top of that I am deluded into the belief that my station is much more effective than it really is when I have raised z3 first call and no c/s repeats, in effect I have been cheated.
K6zzz may be delighted that he can really get to grips with those east coast competitors and give them a game but is this really desirable anyway? Cqww is about geography, that's why they divided the world into 40 zones, it is about propagation, I don't want to hear K6/K1. XE, KL7 for the 48 hours of the contest on all bands. The whole thing has become pointless.
 
I believe fully that this new category is an undesirable move, why not just create an additional contest in the calendar and let the experimenters and all interested parties
join in that new 'Repeater/Internet' event?.
 
73  Brian 5B4AIZ.