I'm not a serious contester, so probably shouldn't even comment, but it
seems to me that you *should* have an advantage if you have a station
that is intrinsically better than someone else's. You might as well
suggest that you only get half points if Trey is on the team, because
he is a better contester than most people.
The one thing you can't do anything about is geographical location.
You don't expect to win WAE from the west coast or the JA contests
from the east coast. Perhaps this can be addressed by having separate
score listings for each third of the country (or each call area, or
even each state). It wouuldn't cost the sponsors much to give out
certificates to the top N stations in Rhode Island etc.
In fact, the JA contest results are done this way - there are awards
to the top N in each call area. Some (all?) of the ARRL contests
recognize winners in each of the geographical sections. Of course
this results in so many winners that the Real Winners might object
to it - heck, I won STX low power 160m CW one year by making about
200 QSOs (beating out a field of about 4 other entrants...).
Nothing original here, this is adopted in many contests, but not in
all of them. If you really care about winning but not about improving
your station to do it, then (a) choose the right contest to enter,
and/or (b) move :-)
Derek AA5BT (who made a little over 200 QSOs in CQWW-ssb and should
probably be ejected from this group).
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