[VHFcontesting] Fwd: [VHF] New VHF contest rules

[James Duffey]

There are new rules for the 2015 January VHF Contest. Assisted categories have been added. Wayne, N6NB, asked me to forward his comments, below, about the rules to this forum, which is probably more appropriate than the VHF forum to which they were originally posted, I will send my comments on the new rules and Wayne’s comments in a separate posting, so as to avoid confusion. - Duffey KK6MC

Wayne’s comments:

> The new rules for the January VHF contest, just published online yesterday (12/31/2014), are very interesting--and very different from the rules proposed by ARRL's board-level Ad Hoc Subcommittee on VHF Revitalization in November.  The ad hoc committee requested feedback from the field with a Dec. 15 deadline.  The proposed rule revisions and member feedback were to be considered by the ARRL Programs and Services Committee at a meeting just before the annual meeting of the full ARRL Board of Directors in mid-January--or so I assumed from what I read.
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> Meanwhile, someone (presumably the headquarters staff) drafted new rules and put them into effect for the January VHF contest.  The new rules create three new entry categories: single operator unlimited high power, single operator unlimited low power and single operator unlimited portable.  This will bring the number of categories in the January VHF Contest up to 13.  During the years when the largest percentage of licensed amateurs in the U.S. participated in VHF contests, there were only two categories (single operator and multioperator).  There were only six categories as recently as 2007. "Assistance" will be permitted in the new "unlimited" categories but forbidden in the other single operator categories. Any rover who uses assistance will be placed in the unlimited rover category where scores cannot be counted in the club competition.
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> In contrast, the rules proposed by the ad hoc committee would allow any operator to use assistance, regardless of entry category.  No new categories were proposed.  Rovers in any category were to be allowed not only to use spotting assistance but also to do such things as announce their arrival in a new grid square on a repeater, on the internet, etc.  Rovers in the 10 GHZ and up contest already announce their arrivals at new places on repeaters, at least in California and nearby states.
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> There's certainly room to debate the merits of the staff-written version of the rules as opposed to what the board-level committee publicly proposed.  My own opinion is that there are already too many categories in VHF contests, including several that attract only a few participants.  I don't think adding three more categories for assisted single operators is the answer.  I think it's time to allow modern forms of assistance such as spotting across the board.
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> But what's more interesting to me is that the new rules seem to have been adopted before the board-level Programs and Services Committee or the full Board of Directors could meet and consider the issue.
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> This gives me a real sense of deja vu.  I'm not a member of the current ad hoc committee, but I was attending ARRL Board meetings as an elected vice director in 1991, when two very important changes in VHF contest rules were implemented without any discussion at a board meeting (unless I slept through the whole thing).  League Lines in the May, 1991 QST announced two new categories in VHF contests:  limited (four-band) multioperator and rover.  Until then, all multioperators were in one category and rovers were treated as single operators (with their scores in various grid squares listed separately). Hindsight tells us that the limited multioperator category caused a large drop in activity on the higher bands and took away incentive for groups to upgrade their stations to new bands.  It did, of course, create a way for smaller multioperator groups to win without having to compete with the best-equipped groups in the northeast.  And the rover category led to all sorts of controversy--and four major rule revisions over the ensuing 20 years.
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> Whatever the merits of the new rules, I wish rule changes of this magnitude could be formally discussed at the ARRL board level, or at least by a board committee, before being enacted.
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> 73, Wayne, N6NB
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