Hello and thanks for the bandwidth.
Talking about factors with a big influence on score there is one giving
the majority of contesters a score handicap up to 100 percent and more
unrelated to equipment and skill - hampering bigguns with multiple
radios and stacks as well as small pistols with buried dipoles. It´s
operating time. Counting through the published operation times in
Russian DX Contest I was amazed how little time participants could
invest compared to the fulltime contest duration of 24 hours. In 2005
and 2006 around 6,5 percent operated 23 to 24 hours, around 12,5 percent
20-24 hours. More than two thirds operated less than half time. The
average operation time of all logsending SOAB was 10,8 or 9,8 hours.
One may argue in every single case why there wasn´t more time available
but the figures building from 745 and 892 people reflect the average
reality in an amateur (!) sport with the restrictions of our everyday
lives (as the low tribanders reflect the reality of antenna
possibilities). To add or negotiate more hours is not related to
operating skills and station development which are compared in a contest.
Personally I´d prefer a basic/limited class with a halftime limit or a
bit above, allowing additional operating after that time for
checklog-qsos like in BARTG´s 6-hour-category helping overall activity.
There is not much activity to be lost when a few contesters may reduce
their operation time from now 18 hours to 15 - but there is a lot of
competiveness to be gained when the majority of participants is not
longer to be compared with the few 24-hour-scores. With more of us
12-hour-hams not only "handing out a few points" but operating in a
real competition (equal distance for most participants) overall
qso-number may rise. Again: no whining for cheap victories but a way to
bring more contesting for a bigger number of hams in times of a
shrinking ham population.
And of course interesting to see that beside commonsense-reigned IOTA
(12-hour-category) RTTY-organizers are the ones to already take up with
that topic, having a lot of time based categories or offers better
fitting in everyday lives like in Makrothen- or SARTG-contest.
Thanks for reading and best 73,
Chris (DL8MBS)
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