Hello everyone....I want to assure everyone that the proposed new rules
for the UHF contest were NOT set up to discriminate against me. Thanks
for the spirited defense, but in this case, no defense is needed.
I have not entered the UHF contest for several years, so I am not a
factor in that contest. I used to enter the contest when I had a few
rovers out and about in our area that I could work. For whatever reason,
all my rovers quit, so essentially there is no one for me to work.
Without the rovers, there must be at least 4-5 stations that I can work
on 222 and / or 432.....and these are 250-300 miles away. We just do
not have the population density here that the East Coast has.
I was a (small) part of the working group on Distance Scoring. I
provided several real logs with a mixture of EME and tropo contacts for
the committee to use for modeling. These logs proved that EME
overwhelms any other method when distance scoring is the metric. As a
possible solution, I proposed a "sliding scale" formula for really long
distance contacts. This would include EME, nEs, Au, TEP, and whatever
other mechanisms produce really long contacts. If F2 ever comes back,
we would probably have to include that too..... Unfortunately, this
idea never gained any traction, partly because it was difficult to find
a formula that seemed to work.
As an example, at one time, the 2M Sprint was distance scored. There
were stations on the East Coast with 180 contacts(in 4 hours)....I had
only 28 contacts. However, the shortest of my contacts was about 4500
miles to EU, while the longest was a bit less than 10K miles to ZL
land. It does not take too much counting on fingers and toes to see
that the EME score just blew everything else away. I purposely did not
enter that contest again while it was distance scored.
The EU contests ban EME because many / most(??) of them are distance
scored. Apparently, they cannot find any way to make EME and tropo
co-exist either.
Because the other contests are NOT distance scored, EME gives me a way
to compete that is fair to all. Anyone can put up an EME station these
days, so everyone has the same chances. A grid in EU is just as
valuable as a grid in PA, so that is fair as well. Distance scoring is
NOT a panacea for any perceived problems in VHF contesting. I would
hope that everyone would understand this.
My idea is to leave the major, well established contests as they are
now. The new assistance rules have solved all or almost all of the
previous problems there. I love the new rules and I commend the
committee for their efforts there. The committee can let the UHF
contest "test the waters" so to speak. Maybe the new ideas will turn
out to be great....maybe not. But changes can be made after we see what
is not working.
73 Marshall K5QE
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