[VHFcontesting] General VHF Rules 1.2 and 1.3

[James Duffey]

Jim - I agree with you that General Rule 1.3 stifles a lot of activity. In addition to precluding effective mentoring of newcomers, it also prevents rovers from submitting a fixed or QRP portable entry in addition to the rover entry when they stop overnight, and it also prevents an easy way to get those capable VHF stations that are not being used in the contest on the air. 

I suspect that this rule came about as a consequence of two events. The first is that between the times the QRP Portable category was instituted and before the Rover Category was instituted it was commonplace for QRP Portable stations to act like present day rovers, operating from several grids during a contest and submitting logs from each grid they operated in. This resulted in the same person winning the QRP Portable Category in multiple sections, having the top 2 or 3 scores in a section, regardless of class, and in at least one occasion, a single station appearing twice in the top ten list. I think the multiple entry rule was instituted about the same time the rover class was started. Although I do not see anything wrong with this practice, some felt it was an abuse of the system and one of the faults that the rover class was supposed to cure. 

The second event, I suspect is that some clubs were using multiple entries from the same operator to boost their score. So, if several big guns in a club got together for a multi effort their stations would sit idle. Why not get someone who is a good op to go around and operate their stations in rotation, put them on the air and make some more points for the club? I don't see anything wrong with this practice either, as long as the idle stations being put on the air worked lots of stations outside the club. 

As you say, while not exactly commonplace, this is done on HF, particularly in Sweepstakes where once the majority of sections, or all the sections are worked then one can contribute to a club score more effectively by putting another station on the air rather than to continue to accumulate additional QSOs with no more mults. 

Rule 1.2 was certainly instituted to prevent manufactured contacts and I agree, if one could separate the QSOs one gets from tutoring newcomers from those made to manufacture QSOs it would be good, but I don't quite see how to do this. 

In politics when encountering something bizarre, the common saying is to "follow the money". In VHF contesting it seems to be "follow the club competitions". :^)=  - Duffey