An obvious question, Randy: will this country/zone chasing be assisted,
or real DX chasing?
Jim Neiger N6TJ
On 4/6/2017 5:03 PM, Randy Thompson K5ZD wrote:
Hi Mark,
I spent a lot of time thinking about something like this when I was Director
of the CQWW. I know there are a lot of DXers out there who operate the
contest just to chase countries. Always wondered if there would be interest
in a "DXer" competition where the winner would have the highest total
countries + zones. I balked on doing something because it seemed like the
top mults always went to the serious guys who made the most QSOs. Never
found a good way to put the emphasis more on DX chasing. Perhaps a combined
total for SSB and CW would help.
Didn't see much discussion on this, but wanted to add some support for the
idea.
Randy, K5ZD
-----Original Message-----
From: CQ-Contest [mailto:cq-contest-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of
Mark
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2017 9:23 PM
To: CQ-Contest@contesting.com
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Contest Idea
A few days ago there were some comments around contests and rules you
would like to see. So here is one idea.
At the moment CQ has a DX Marathon that runs for a year. I have been
thinking what would happen if there was a version that was run over 48
hours? As with the Marathon the object would be to work as many
countries and zones as you could but unlike the CQ WW (for example) the
number of QSOs you make is irrelevant. You could utilise the categories
in the existing CQ WW contests e.g. single op single band or all band,
assisted, unassisted, multi op etc. The exchange would be report and CQ
Zone (the latter largely so you know what zone the person is in so you
can claim it). Ties would be broken by looking at who worked their last
country/zone the earliest.
Unlike the CQ WW which is largely a rate contest, this would be a
strategy contest i.e. you would have to figure out how to maximise your
country and zone count. When do you call CQ? Should you S&P instead?
Which way should I turn my beam and when? Of course you may end up
working a number of stations who do not count because you have already
worked someone in that region (but who you should log regardless), but
that might be the price worth paying to work for example that rare zone
guy who you have heard and who does not like pile ups.
This sort of format might also encourage non-contesters (i.e DXers) to
have a go and from there if they like it a few more may turn up in the
more regular type contests. Any QSO would also count towards the annual
DX marathon so a lot of those guys would probably turn up looking for new
countries.
Issues to be considered would be modes and bands. As a competition it
should probably be restricted to the non-WARC bands although of course
the annual DX Marathon covers all bands. Presumably any mode should
count i.e.
CW SSB and digital which would certainly spread the participants out and
the entry categories should reflect that.
Log checking should in theory be easier as you only have to worry about
QSOs that were new countries and Zones for an entrant.
To avoid a cluttered contest calendar perhaps it could be run each year
on a weekend which crosses two months. This year for example would be
September 30 and October 1. That would add an additional element of
changing the seasonal propagation so you may need to think of a new
strategy each time.
If you want to get an idea of what an outcome may look like, have a look
at the CQ WW results database and sort a category by countries worked.
It is quite interesting.
73
Mark ZL3AB (flameproof jacket suitably donned)
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