This is an excellent summary.
I wonder if a good solution would be, for the purposes of
Sweepstakes or other contests that use "sections" for an exchange
or multiplier, to refer to YT/NWT/NU as the "Arctic" section
and use "ARC" as the abbreviation. This would be similar to
the "Maritime (MAR)" section, which spans several provinces,
but is not appropriating the name of a single province to
represent the whole.
Or, someone could just decide that YT/NWT/NU are interchangeable.
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 01:04:34AM -0500, Dave wrote:
> I want to offer a little clarification on the matter of
> Canadian "sections."
>
> As others have pointed out, "sections" are the geographic
> areas that are the basis of the ARRL and RAC field
> organisations. Currently in Canada, there are RAC sections
> for NL, MAR, QC, ON, MB, SK, AB and BC. There is no field
> organisation as such in YT, NT and NU, but there could be as
> soon as someone takes of the job of organising one or more.
> Despite the absence of any field organisation in these three
> territories, they are considered to be one "section" for the
> purposes of some ARRL contests (SS, 160m) as multipliers.
> In other contests, including some ARRL contests (DX, 10m),
> these three territories are each considered separate
> multipliers.
>
> Someone noted that YT is part of RAC's "Pacific Section."
> This is false. YT is bunched in with BC for the purposes of
> elections to RAC's Board of Directors, while NT and NU are
> bunched in with Alberta for that same purpose, but this has
> no relation to the "field organisation" or contest
> multipliers. In that same vein, Ontario is divided in two
> on RAC's board, but is only one "section" in the field
> organisation and for multipliers.
>
> "Sections" are one class of thing. The members of the RAC
> Board constitute another class of thing. Provinces and
> Territories, constitued parts of the Dominion of Canada, are
> yet another class of thing. Don't mix them up.
>
> Confusing? Sure, but there are bigger mysteries in life.
>
> Why is there no field organisation in Canada's arctic?
> There are only 100,000 people living in a land area of about
> 3.5 million square kilometres, which, for some of the more
> parochial readers here, is five time the size of Texas.
> There may be all of 200 hams in all that space. Think about
> those numbers: what proportion of the Amateur population
> gets involved in their local field organisation? Darned
> few. When they do, it's usually begins with a local net. A
> net covering such as vast area is anything but local,
> especially when the aurora is nearly always present to
> absorb your signal.
>
> In short, the YT/NT/NU "section" is a harmless fiction that
> serves only to make a very few contests more interesting.
> ARRL 's contest robot could accomodate the few logs they
> receive from good guys like J. VY1JA by accepting YT, NT and
> NU as legitimate identifiers for this non-existent
> "section." I bet it wouldn't take five minutes to fix that,
> less time that it took me to write this.
>
> Dave VE2ZP
>
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> CQ-Contest@contesting.com
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Kenneth E. Harker "Vox Clamantis in Deserto" kharker@cs.utexas.edu
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Department of the Computer Sciences VP, Central Texas DX & Contest Club
Taylor Hall TAY 2.124 Maintainer of Linux on Laptops
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/
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