I think it is a waste of "steam" discussing the "bad" change of having ONE
lousy point for own country's QSOs.
We went through considerable discussions over the subject last year and years
before. Thank you Steve, N8BJQ for listening to us and implementing the 1
point per QSO. I think it would have been better to stick with the rule of
double points on low bands, that is have 2 points for own country on 40, 80,
160. But anyway, thanks for one point, better than nothing.
I expect increased activity especially form US and other large ham population
countries. It is nowadays idiotic to have 0 point QSOs, why do we want
discourage any QSOs in the contest? Is there anyone out there who didn't run
out of pileup by the second day and couldn't use some more points?
We should see more participation from US, this change will eliminate useless
zero pointers and with it reluctance to work other stations, especially on low
bands (80/160) which are DEAD in WPX. I typically make less than half QSOs
than in other contests on 160m. Last year world my record breaking score was
over 400 QSO, that is over two nights. One could make more QSOs just by
calling CQ anybody on any weekend.
WPX is a nice, fast contest, tends to be more fair to "regular" stations. UA9
is as good as XZ1 multiplier. 36 hrs of operating gives chance to those up
North with limited band openings to rack up decent score. So if you didn't try
it yet or were sitting on the side because you were worth ZERO, jump in, join
the fun and see you on 160m as XJ1BY or VA1A. 10 lucky ex zero pointers will
be drawn and win personalized T shirt.
SM2EKM will miss the much improved for everybody contest. Let's prove him
wrong.
We should see the flood of "weird" prefixes from US. Scores will go up,
integrity of records preserved, let's go for it!
Yuri K3BU, VE3BMV, VE1BY
--
CQ-Contest on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/_cq-contest/
Administrative requests: cq-contest-REQUEST@contesting.com
|