[VHFcontesting] New UHF contest rules and thoughts

[Terry Price]

I'm puzzled why the negativity on eme contacts, anyone know why? If someone
has the equipment and the technical ability, why limit them? I've always
felt the same about single ops being able to work multiple bands at once, if
you are good enough to do it, why limit someone. As far as scoring goes,
just place a limit of the max distance, seems pretty easy to me.

Given the amount of other contests through the summer, the date is ok. I do
a lot of mountaintopping and there will still be snow on some of the places
possibly but I've also been in the UP of Michigan in August and the black
flies are big enough to carry you away so I understand!!

Distance scoring should not be feared. Yes, it might take a contest to get
used to but there are many benefits - first and foremost it will all but
eliminate the pack roving being a good way to pad your score since a real
station in the Midwest can work WAY farther and get a bigger multiplier.
Most logging programs support the Stew Perry 160 contest so the logic is in
the programs. For the folks that roll their own logging programs my hat is
off to you for being able to do that but if you are smart enough to write
one, you should have the skills to make this change. I also think it will
help to level the playing field between folks in the Midwest and east coast
folks. There is nothing any of us can do about the fact there are more
people on the eastern side of the US and thus more VHF activity. But with
that increased activity and additional population comes QRM and QRN. When I
lived in EM79, I would almost always out multiplier folks in the NE and out
distance them but was way down in Q's. My hope is this will help this
situation and show a station in W9 land that can work 500 miles in all
directions can compete with someone in FNXX that has the ocean 100 miles to
the east.

Last is my biggest pet peeve. The rover scoring that the ARRL had a knee
jerk reaction to many years ago and damn near killed a good thing. Through a
loop hole in the rules someone doing their best to help their club was able
to amass a BIG score and really piss of other clubs. It was no one's fault,
in a contest you do what you can within the written rules to get the biggest
score....pretty simple. In those days, every time a rover changed grids they
started their log over and at the end all the logs were added and you could
get a HUGE score but it ENCOURAGED rovers to hit as many grids as you could
because your score really went up. What should have been done and it still
could be in they would stop being so political and think about rovers who
are really the ones that make a lot of excitement during the contests is to
just limit or eliminate rover scores from club competition. Just the fact a
rover is out there adding to every members score is enough to help their
club WITHOUT having to add their individual score. Plus, for the western
rovers where roads are more wide open and grid boundaries lay on more road
lines, it would help them immensely which is a GOOD THING!!!!

I hope the ARRL listens and adopts the majorities ideas!!

Terry - W8ZN