[VHFcontesting] Re:ERP-based Entry Classes
N1OFZ
n1ofz at arrl.net
Wed Dec 17 10:22:52 EST 2003
I have been rereading and rethinking Ev's proposal for many days now.
It got me to thinking about why these changes were suggested in the
first place. Increased participation in the higher bands. I'm pretty
sure the changing the scoring to ERP is not going to do that.
17 of 445 class A ops used bands over 1296 in the June 2003 contest.
Out of the top 10 class A ops only 1 had bands over 1296. Further,
that op only had 2304 and made 2Q's. So it is pretty clear that you
don't need a lot of bands to win SOLP. On the other hand, 29 of 157
class B ops used bands over 1296. 6 out of the top 10 ops had bands
over 1296. Looks like to be competitive in SOHP you have to have more
bands. Dare I say that there is almost a self imposed (natural) 5 band
limit in SOLP?
The focus of increasing participation on the higher bands needs to be
on finding an inexpensive, plug and play way of getting the large
number of guys with IC-706's, FT-100's and all the other HF-VHF/UHF
rigs on SHF+. The guys who can build transverters themselves and the
scrounger/modifier are probably already on these bands. What is left
is a big pool of people who need a way. Telling them to shell out
$400+ for a transverter and then a few more hundred for feed line,
relays, etc, doesn't make sense to them. They probably only spent
$500-1000 for a rig that does HF-UHF. Why does it cost almost as much
to add one SHF band? Why bother? The stats show it is not even going
to help their score much. Where does ERP classes provide an incentive
to add more bands? If anything it might move some of the existing SOLP
into SOHP which may not make them too happy.
In general guys who want to get on other bands do it because they want
to. Curiosity, the challenge and I'm sure many other reasons. The
only way to get the 'general population' to do it is to make it easy
and cheap to do. No contest rules change is going to do it...
Dana
N1OFZ
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