[VHFcontesting] VHF+ Contesting Rule Changes

[Ward Silver]

With respect to the new categories, there's nothing particularly odd 
about the timing.  The changes approved in January of 2014 (and publicly 
announced in board reports) have just taken a while to work their way 
through an over-burdened system.  Here's my take on it - not official, 
I'm not staff, I just edit contest writeups and help shovel on various 
projects :-)

The ARRL Board Programs and Services Committee approved the addition of 
Single-Op Unlimited categories to *all* ARRL contests at the January 
2014 meeting.  This was based on a recommendation in 2013 by the CAC 
that was approved by the Awards Committee, THEN passed to the P&SC which 
THEN passes it back to staff.  Here's the report:

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/About%20ARRL/Committee%20Reports/2014/January/Doc_16.pdf

Note that the CAC recommendation (all reports are online at 
http://www.arrl.org/committee-reports) only referred to HF contests but 
the P&SC extended that recommendation to *all* ARRL contests.  Note also 
that while the P&SC report refers to the category names as "Assisted", 
the actual word used in the titles is "Unlimited".

Yes, it would have been nice to have this all announced and implemented 
a year ago but about the time of the P&SC directives in January, the 
ARRL Contest Branch Manager abruptly abandoned ship, leaving a rather 
large backlog and no one to manage any of the existing processes, much 
less add new categories.  KX9X, N1ND, and I shared those duties during 
the replacement process and the current manager W1MSW was hired and 
started work in July.  Matt has done an awesome job getting caught up 
and making sure all the processes are working as well as they can.  And 
there was this Centennial thing right in the middle of that, as well.  
Part of his catch-up job has been to update the rules to include the 
previously approved categories and this has now been accomplished with 
the January VHF Contest being the final one to get the new SOU 
categories.  Without the unexpected personnel turnover, this would have 
been announced and implemented in early 2014 and the timing would not 
have been an issue.

The ad-hoc committee was not approved until the July 2014 board meeting, 
six months after the extension of SOU to VHF+ contests was approved.  
Here's that report (see page 2):

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/About%20ARRL/Committee%20Reports/2014/July/Doc_16.pdf

Now...as to the ad-hoc committee's potential rule changes.  The first 
part of this email should give you some idea of the speed at which 
changes occur.  Anything the ad-hoc committee comes up with will have to 
be placed on the agenda for the P&SC committee's next meeting.  The 
recommendations of the P&SC committee will then have to be approved by 
the Board at *their* next meeting.  If I am correct in understanding the 
process and assuming no report from the ad-hoc committee has been 
delivered, no rule change decision could be made by the board until July 
at the very earliest and even next January is probably optimistic.  
Furthermore, a comprehensive set of changes will likely require changes 
in data processing at HQ and that will have to get in line with 
everything else ARRL IT has on their plate in a very tight budget year.

In my opinion, VHF+ rule changes will happen - but it will be a while 
before they are actually implemented just because of the way governance 
happens in the ARRL and because of limited IT resources. To stay up to 
date and prevent surprises, watch for the various committee reports as 
they come out to find out what staff is being directed to do, status of 
ongoing projects, and if there are any other dependencies on budget or 
resources to get them done.

73, Ward N0AX