[VHFcontesting] Re: Fw: VHFcontesting, Get A Grip!

[Joel N. Weber II]

> Much of this particular thread assumes that the main
> goal is to "level the playing field" which has been
> correctly pointed out is not possible. Perhaps instead
> the underlying goal for some of the suggested rule
> changes is to make VHF contesting more interesting and
> challenging?

Sure.  Or perhaps to attract more participants.

> Going to a 6 digit grid exchange for example will make
> it more of a challenge to complete those really weak
> Q's because of the slightly longer exchange.

I'd actually kind of like to see the exchange be different on every
band.  If I've successfully made a contact on one band, and then move
to another band, I already know what your callsign is, and already
know what your grid is.  So if I hear something that sort of sounds
like what I heard 30 seconds ago, there can be an inclination to
believe that I have in fact heard it.  If there was new information being
exchanged on each band, and you were only going to hear it on that
band, then we'd really know that we could meaningfully pass
information each time a contact has been claimed.

Sure, people could still cheat if they really wanted to cheat, but as
it is now, there's a lot of room to hear something where you already
know what you're going to hear and not even necessarily realize that
you're fudging.

> Adding a
> distance based QSO point variable will make the posted
> results more interesting, particularly for the higher
> bands. After all a 3456MHz Q from the eastern edge of
> one grid to the western edge of its neighbor is far
> more of an accomplishment than working the line of
> site station on a hilltop 5 Mi across the valley. But
> with the scoring structure used today there would be
> absolutely no difference in points.

Well, there's a question of whether points are linearly proportional
to effort, and then there's the question of whether more effort
increases the score.

I think a 3.4ghz contact across a couple hundred miles is invariably
going to increase your score some, since even in New England there are
sufficiently few stations to work that, at least in a multiop station,
you really do want to make every contact you possibly can, even if
it's hard.

I've never made contacts on either 10ghz or on 3.4ghz, but it does
occur to me to wonder if a contest with rules similar to the 10ghz and
up contest that included 3.4ghz would be worthwhile.  Maybe the August
UHF contest could be modified to fill that niche.

I'm a bit concerned about whether making the VHF contest scoring more
complicated might make it less popular.  And sometimes it's useful to
know what your score is, so you know whether going after more
multipliers or more QSO points is the right approach, and making the
scoring more complicated thus is a disadvantage to those without
computer logging.

On the other hand, the 10ghz contest is actually simpler, in that it
throws out the multiplier, so the impact on your final score of any
particular contact is more obvious.  In a way, this is a disadvantage,
though: I've read that for a while, it was the case that participants
who also had 24ghz tended to score *below* those with only 10ghz, in
the 10ghz and up contest.  The multiplier system that we have in the
VHF contests seems to be effective at encouraging collecting
additional bands, even if you only use them to work a few grids.

I think it's also the case that the strategy for the 10ghz and up
contest is very different from the strategy for the VHF contests.
This is nice, from a perspective of making things more interesting.

> Will the same potential for inequity still exist for
> everyone, of course it will, but wouldn't it be more
> interesting to analyze contest results that ALSO show
> X number of MI (or KM) per Q in addition to the
> existing Q's and multipliers scoring of today? The
> added burden for computing your score is minimal since
> the heavy-duty calculating work will only need to be
> done during the ARRL log checking process. So those
> without computers will be only be missing out on the
> luxury of knowing their final score quickly.

Being able to do analysis of the logs after the contest for this sort
of thing might be interesting, even if it doesn't change the point
scoring.

Another thing to consider, if requiring participants to have a GPS is
undesireable, would be to allow five digit zip codes to be submitted,
and 6 digit grids could be estimated from that.  People could still be
strongly encouraged to submit accurate 6 digit grid square where
they're available.

73,
Joel
KB1GRS