31st March 1999
Hello all
I've been following some, but not all, of the debate about
'QSO points' in WPX etc. - I apologise if this suggestion
has already been made and I missed it.
The problems with WPX seem more fundamental than just how
many points each QSO is worth - I feel that the idea of
using prefixes as 'multipliers' is now outdated, and that
the CQ WW Committee should scrap both WPX events altogether,
and replace them with 2 contests similar/identical to CQ WW.
In the early days of WPX, I can remember working e.g.
several W3 stations, then being called by an N3 and thinking
'a new mult !' - nowadays with so many more people enjoying
our hobby and so many more different prefixes, whether vanity
calls, contest calls, special calls for WPX, etc, almost every
QSO is a 'mult' in WPX. In CQ WW however, there are a finite
number of 'mults' and arguably more operator skill/experience
is needed to find them (it's more fun without the DX Cluster!)
On the issue of U.S. stations on 40m, I found it very
frustrating in ARRL SSB hearing 6s and 7s with 59 signals, but
not being able to work them because they never called 'CQ'
- I fully understand that 7000-7100 must just sound like a
wall of stations if you are in the U.S. - there does not
seem to be an easy solution to this problem. One station
who called 'CQ' was W0AIH and I told them what a good idea
that was !!
One last suggestion (if you've read this far!) - there seems
to be a problem with a backlog/non-arrival of certificates etc.
for CQ WW etc past events - we all like to receive some
acknowledgement for our efforts, but it seems to me that there
are too many combinations of country/mode/section/power etc
in CQ WW to make it practical to award a certificate to
every 'winner'. The whole system needs simplified - for
example a certificate might only be awarded if there were a
minumum of 10 entries in that particular category.
73 Chris GM3WOJ/GM7V
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