On Wed, 9 December, 2009 3:13 am, David Kopacz wrote:
> I am very interested in ideas how the scoring system could be changed in
> a manner that gives everyone a fair chance to win, regardless of
> location.
It can't be. The big concentrations of contesters are still in Europe and
the eastern US. The place to win will still be in the Atlantic basin.
There's no way someone in VE7, 3D2, JA, 5Z or VU can presently win no
matter what scoring system you have, unless you bring in some dubious
system of regional modifiers.
If you move to 1 pt/km scoring, then it's pretty obvious who benefits if
people would only stop to think about it - areas which lie a long way
south of the big population centres (high points/QSO) but who still
benefit from long periods of propagation with no polar disruption - i.e.
ZD7/8, ZS, V5, PY, CX, LU, and God help us, even VP8 (although they're
probably a bit too far south). But think about it carefully - do you want
your contest DXpedition to go to VP5 or VP8 in November?
These things change over time anyway. In the 1970s West Coast stations
could win CQWW in the US but the decline in JA contesting, and surge in Eu
activity coupled with political changes adding more Eu multipliers means
the balance of power has tilted East not just from Zone 3 to Zone 5 but
also from Zone 8/9 to Zone 33.
And in 10 years, who knows? N7ZG put a smiley after his query about
increasing contest activity in China. But why a smiley? If contesting
took off in BY and VU seriously the way it has in Eastern Europe (and it's
already growing) it would again tilt geographical advantage, within Eu it
would probably do so fairly dramatically to the East.
Winning Eu or the US is, in my view, just as much an achievement as
winning a world title anyway. The current scoring system encourages me to
run DX rather than just squatting somewhere and running Eu; it also
encourages the 6Ys to run me rather than just hunting for US easy meat, or
the HS0s to work me rather than just JA. In a *DX* contest, that's a good
thing.
73
Gerry GI0RTN
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