[VHFcontesting] VHF Contesting: Fixing the Grid Circling Problem

[Kenneth E. Harker]

On Fri, Aug 05, 2005 at 04:30:32AM -0700, Radiosporting Fan wrote:

> Ultimately, exchanging political 'entities' (grids)
> for physics (DX) will change the strategies of all
> classes of operation but along the way, doing so will
> more closely align radio sports with a radio sporting
> event's intent (making contact with the most number of
> different stations over the greatest distances
> possible).  That is not a bad thing.

Actually, almost every contest I know of is based not on
"making contact with the most number of different stations 
over the greatest distances possible" but instead on the 
principle of "making contact with the most number of different 
stations in te greatest number of different locations 
possible."  A few contests also reward distant contacts,
for example by giving different QSO point values for 
contacts based on the station's continental location, but
many very popular contests do not.  

For example, two popular HF contests, the ARRL November 
Sweepstakes and the ARRL International DX Contest, do not
explicitly reward distance.  The first station I work
in Missouri is as important to my score in the Sweepstakes 
as the first station I work in Massachusetts.  In the DX 
contest, I get the same score boost from working a new
mult in Haiti as I do from working a new mult in Thailand.
But, a station that can communicate more reliably over 
longer distances will (all other tings being equal) be
able to work more multipliers, and thus distance QSOs are 
implicitly rewarded.

By using a grid-based multiplier system, the ARRL VHF 
contests also implicitly reward distance, because stations 
that can communicate over longer distances will (all other 
things being equal) be able to work more multipliers on any 
given band.  The fact that the grids are of uniform size
and distribution makes this implicit advantage more 
even and fair.

Where this breaks down is when (a) stations can move to 
new multipliers, and (b) more than one callsign is used
by a single contest operation to manufacture QSOs with
itself.  That doesn't mean that multipliers by location
are inherently wrong - it means that we need to deny 
this operational behavior that most of us think of as 
cheating.  There are plenty of other forms of cheating
disallowed in contest rules - this is no different.

-- 
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
kenharker at kenharker.com
http://www.kenharker.com/