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Re: [VHFcontesting] History of Activity and Additional Categories inVHF

To: "'James Duffey'" <JamesDuffey@comcast.net>, "'VHF Contesting Reflector'" <vhfcontesting@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [VHFcontesting] History of Activity and Additional Categories inVHF Contesting
From: "Jim Worsham" <wa4kxy@bellsouth.net>
Reply-to: wa4kxy@bellsouth.net
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:04:22 -0500
List-post: <vhfcontesting@contesting.com">mailto:vhfcontesting@contesting.com>
A very impressive read.  Has W9GKA continued his work on this and was this
ever published?  It is a very extensive and scholarly analysis so I was
wondering if he did this for publication somewhere.

73
Jim, W4KXY

-----Original Message-----
From: vhfcontesting-bounces@contesting.com
[mailto:vhfcontesting-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of James Duffey
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 11:37 AM
To: VHF Contesting Reflector
Cc: James Duffey
Subject: [VHFcontesting] History of Activity and Additional Categories inVHF
Contesting

Everyone who is contributing to this discussion on roving should read  
W9GKA's excellent monograph on the impacts of various changes on VHF  
contesting over the years:

< http://www.w9smc.com/SMC%20VHF/OtherImpactsarticle.pdf >

There is a lot there relevant to this discussion, including a thorough  
statistical analysis of various impacts on contest participation.

Important things to take away from that monograph that are relevant to  
our discussion on roving include:

1. Changes to contest rules, scoring, and contest categories have  
little impact on contest activity.

2. Creating new categories doesn't generate any more contest activity.  
Participants just move from one category to another. This has proven  
to be true for the limited multi op category, which just transferred  
participants from the multi op category to the limited multi op  
category. It appears that this has happened with the additional rover  
categories as well. There were 96 entries in the 3 different roving  
categories for the 2008 June contest, while there were 98 in the  
single rover category in the 2007 contest.

3. Extrinsic events have a bigger impact on contest participation than  
do changes in contest structure itself.

4. The rover category was born in controversy, in part to deal with  
issues that are similar what is being discussed here; some contestants  
in the QRP Portable category thought that others in that category were  
abusing the rules by operating from several different grids in a  
contest and often the same station appeared several times in the top  
10 and occasionally won the portable category in multiple sections.  
The implementation of a rover category was also to reduce the impact  
of captive roving, controversial then as now.

5. One thing that correlates well to activity is club entries. This  
may be one place for the VUAC to look for increasing activity in VHF  
contesting.

6. In the beginning of VHF contests, and for the first years, there  
were no categories. Multi ops competed with single ops and mobiles  
were thrown in there as well. After a few years, multi op stations had  
the individual ops listed, but they competed with the single ops. All  
participants were listed together.

W9GKA is on the list, I hope that he will correct me if I have  
misrepresented and misinterpreted the contents of his paper. Every  
time I reread that paper I learn something new.

I have several more thoughts on the roving topic, which I will put in  
separate e-mails. - Duffey


--
KK6MC
James Duffey
Cedar Crest NM





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