I'd be one of those international rovers. A few years
ago, I did a June VHF QSO Party and began my rove in
CN88 using my US call, K7CW. I then crossed the border
into Canada and began using my VE7RCW call. While in
Canada, I visited CN89, CN99 and DN09. I then
reentered the US and used K7CW again for DN08, CN97,
DN07 and DN06.
Because of the rule that you can't use more than one
callsign in an ARRL contest, I decided to send in
separate logs, one log for K7CW/R contacts and a log
for VE7RCW/R contacts. I didn't figure there would be
a problem because each log was from a different
country.
I was contacted by the ARRL contest desk and told that
I could not enter two logs due to the rule that states
that a competitor may enter only one log in a contest.
I was forced to withdraw one of the logs. I chose the
US log. During a conversation that I had with N1ND, he
told me that I could have used K7CW/VE7/R in Canada
and submitted a rover log for the combined effort due
to the fact that I would have been using the K7CW call
for the whole effort. So, I asked him what the
difference was between K7CW/VE7 and VE7RCW. They're
both legal calls in Canada. I get clipped if I use one
of them and passed if I use the other.
The above is just another hitch introduced into the
rules when the rover category was created. The ARRL
contest desk apparently didn't want to deal with all
those separate entries when guys visited various grids
to pass out points to their buddies in the contest.
They obviously didn't forsee all the possible problems
that could arise from the rules that they made in such
a hurry.
Paul, K7CW
--- Eric Smith <kb7dqh@donobi.net> wrote:
> Interesting to note that the ETDXA and SVHFG sprints
> and
> the CQ WW VHF tests use the "old" rover rules AND
> allow for
> repeated APRS...
>
> Not much "captive grid packing" going on here...
>
> Or, go back to the pre-rover "insanity" of sending
> in
> separate logs for each grid one worked from. This
> would
> also allow for International roving where the rover
> posesses licenses and callsigns for the other
> countries and
> under the current ARRL rules is unable to
> participate fully
> as a rover operating under the proper callsign for
> the
> nation the rover operates from. I know of a couple
> rover
> operations burned by the "one log per contest" and
> "one
> callsign per station" rules.
>
> And for the life of me, I still to this day have no
> idea
> why the ARRL (and everyone else, for that matter)
> limits
> the number of "operators" in a rover vehicle to
> TWO...
> I wonder what "abomination" prompted that silly
> rule...
> Can anyone shed some light on this???
>
> As I understand the reasoning for creating the
> "Rover"
> category in VHF contesting in the first place, was
> to
> recognize the efforts of contesters who travelled to
> multiple rare and unpopulated grids to "get them on
> the
> air" so the greater population of VHF'ers could do
> silly
> things like get more QSL cards and get their VUCC
> sooner...
> or something like that.
>
>
> Eric
> KB7DQH
>
> _______________________________________________
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> VHFcontesting@contesting.com
>
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>
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