What happened, I think K3NA (Eric) just woke us up? Has everyone else
fallen asleep to? Well, I've been thinking about the whole issue of
contests being FAIR and have concluded they aren't. But they are very
competative. Granted my contest experience has only been about six
months, and looking at QST has been nothing t brag about. But my
experiences in competition go back to High School when I used to play
pool to earn cigarette money, and college when I used to out drink my
friends to get them to supply me with free beer and gin. When I finally
decided to work for a living, I had enough money to buy a rife and join
a gun club for 200 yard offhand shooting - every weekend thru winter and
summer. And then I got married.
Having grown up in the Boston area, I developed an attitude that being
FAIR and EQUAL are not important goals in any effort. If contests were
fair, then we would all tie for first place (and conversely last place).
Contest should demonstrate (to ourselves and others) what we can do and
how well we can do under varying conditions. CQ INT demonstrated that
there are alternatives we have not considered. In High School Civics,
we had to learn the fourteen forms of city and town government in
Massachusetts. And they are really quite different. How many forms of
contest do we really have? I have no idea (ask me in a year, you must
know better than I).
So, I propose a new contest which I call CQ PUNT. It would be a four
hour sprint, first down at 10 wpm, second down at 20 wpm, third at
30 wpm and fourth at 40 wpm. The exchange would be RST and ERP, all
on 40 meters. There would only be two classes, Mano a Man and Bobbsie
Twins (i.e., single and multi-op).
The reason for 40 meter comes later, but the 10 wpm would be in the
7.10 to 7.15 Novice segment (yes, at 200 watt limit). The stations
calling CQ PUNT would be limited to 10 wpm in their QSO, but if
someone came back to 40 wpm thay could accept that as a valid exchange.
To add appear to our DX stations who don't like to identify theirselves,
identification is based on rules of the operators country. For example,
I would not have to call CQ CQ TEST de N2ALE/6 N2ALE/6 K, but only
CQ PUNT CQ PUNT, and then only identify myself every 10 minutes (?) as
required by FCC if no QSOs, and once per QSO. Of course, this would
result in a lot of DUPES. So, scoring would be 5 points for 1st contact
per down and 1 point thereafter. The exchange, as I mentioned, would be
RST and ERP based on dBi, so with my 100 watts into a dipole I could
send, for example, n0way 5NN P200 N2ALE. Simple??? First down pits
Novices thru Extra class for toe to toe Nuclear warfare. And everyone
gets an award, based on the QSL method. That is, send in an IRC and you
get back a QSL type card with your score in EACH down and your RANKING.
Second down, we throw out Novices and gear up to 20 wpm on the general
segment of the band, 7.025 to 7.100 Mhz. If Novices wanted to compete,
they should have upgarded. But they would still have their first down
scores. Third down, over to 7.150 to 7.225 MHz and 30 wpm. Antenna
SWR too high in the Phone segment? The ones we lost we only a general
class licence don't feel a bit bad for you! This is competition, you
may have to put up with some intentional QRM too! Finally, Fourth down
in the extra class segment, 7.000 to 7.025 at 40 wpm. If you cannot
handle it, step aside I suspect there will be a lot of QSOs going on
and many of them DUPES. Oh, I can stil only run at 11 wpm so the rules
are not stacked to favor myself.
Next, when does the contest run? Well, of all the complaints I have
seen over the reflector the most severe are from the BLACK HOLE and
problems with the XYL and honey-dos. So, let's try JULY 4th when
we all have the day off in the USA and check the propagation. Well,
for 40 meters 0700 UTC thru 1059 UTC is split between good propagation
to EUROPE and JAPAN, based on a sunspot count of ZERO (and YAGIs).
The times stink on the east and west coast too, but will anyone complain
about TVI when you get out of the Novice band an throw on the Linears???
And finally, why 40 meters. well propagation seems to hold up, which
is why its a shared band. Does this seem clear so far? Of course, for
those who run multi-ops this should be still not too much of a challenge.
I wouldn't want to make things too easy for them either, competition
is worth more if there is a challenge. So, we petition the ITU to allow
operation of some of those who we share the band to get into the show.
Like TransWorld Radio, HCJB, etc. Imagine a modest 100,000 watts into
a curtain antenna from the top of the Andies from a few backwoods
broadcast engineers. The ultimate match of the mutli-op.
Well, its a though - back to sleep.
73, N2ALE/6
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