[VHFcontesting] Activity in the ARRL VHF Contests SInce 1991

[James Duffey]

Chris, sorry to be late in getting back to you on this. You make some good comments:

> If the ARRL contest rules aren't right then why not start a contest that
> you like?   You could even have it on the same weekend.
> People could even send you the same logs and you could score
> them under the new rules and show how great the world could be.

This has been talked about, and Ev, W2EV has even developed some software to do what he calls a contest within a contest. I have a couple of concerns about starting a new contest, primarily that additional contests would dilute the current contest activity so that on a per contest basis, the activity would shrink. The problems with a contest within a contest is that there is not enough interest in submitting the same log twice to two different places. One place is always seen as inferior to the other and hence not very many logs et submitted.

There is a group that formed a year ago to study distance scoring for contests, so there is more than just jawboning going on about new contest scoring and regulations. As a result of this activity It appears that distance scoring will be implemented for the Spring Sprints, so I hope all of us who are interested in distance scoring get on the Sprints and see how much fun it can be. And perhaps demonstrate that there is enough interest in distance scoring to adopt it for another contest or contests. 

There are other barriers to change in VHF contesting, just as there are in HF contesting, ham radio, and society. Proposals that don't require exchanges of grids are not likely to go anywhere, particularly during the Es. Similarly proposals that would eliminate bands won't get support from those who have invested heavily in equipment for the bands being eliminated. Assisted single op classes are opposed by those who view finding QSOs by means other than twisting the dial as less of a challenge. And on and on.  These are all valid reasons to oppose change. And change is not good just for changes sake, there are many examples of unintended consequences, both good and bad,  in VHF contesting rules over the years. So we need to be careful about what we rules we propose and adopt.

Having said all that, and changing gears a bit, and looking at where present VHF activity is; it appears that a 6M only contest a week or two before or after the June VHF contest would be a big hit given the FFMA activity and the good activity that other single band contests like the 10M and 160M contests have, and it seems like a digital only VHF contest would be a big hit and those who don't like the digital modes would not have to compete against them. - Duffey
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KK6MC
James Duffey
Cedar Crest NM