I was a very unhappy member of the Contest Advisory Committee almost twenty
years ago when the ARRL changed the original rover rules which promoted the
activation of less populated grids and rewarded rovers, score-wise, for
doing so. Look back to when N0LRJ in Colorado activated over 20 Colorado
and western KS, grids that mostly had no other activity, and was
competitive nationally as a rover in contests. The new rover rules that
replaced the original ones did not reward roving away from high population
areas. Rovers outside the main metropolitan corridors were no longer
competitive. Roving in the more rural areas and activating rare grids,
both no longer a competitive strategy, had the predictable results-
reduced rover activity and fewer available multipliers. VHF and UHF
contesting in Colorado, and many other rural regions of our country and
Canada were decimated, and have never recovered.
Following the unfortunate adoption of those new rover rules almost twenty
years ago, the League has many times asked for suggestions for revitalizing
VHF and UHF contesting, but they have always rejected the answer- returning
to the original rover rules or something similar. The something similar
that many of us have suggested now for almost 20 years is what has worked
so very well in Europe- contests based on a scoring by distance metric
similar to the popular 160M Stew Perry contest. For almost 20 years the
League has been deaf to what would revitalize VHF and UHF contesting . Is
it any wonder that activity is down and contests cancelled when the League
is deaf to the will of the VHF weak signal enthusiasrts and their
suggestions?
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