What's all this talk about "propagation" and "skip zone?" That's just
science, and science is 'way overrated. The geniuses who change contest
time periods will maybe neutralize the "sun" so it won't burn out and we
all are spared being roasted to a crisp in a few billion years.
cain K1TN
Western stations are usually going to dominate in wintertime North American
domestic contests because of the skip zone on the high bands ("high band" often
includes 40m in the winter). But eastern or midwest stations can do quite well
in domestic contests during the summer. In the summer there is often short-skip
Es on the high bands, and low-band qrn gives eastern stations another advantage
since they have more close in stations to work on the low bands. Eastern
stations do much better in the August NAQP compared to the January NAQP,
although it would be better if the summer NAQP contests were in June or early
July when there tends to be more Es. Any domestic contest that is serious about
being fair needs to be held twice a year, once in the winter and once in the
summer.
Tor N4OGW
On Saturday, February 6, 2021, 8:29:14 AM CST, K3TN via CQ-Contest
<cq-contest@contesting.com> wrote:
Always good to try new ideas in this hobby - let's see how a 2300 start works
and we can all weigh in to the contest sponsors if we liked the change or not.
Funny how "moving the cheese" tends to cause angst in many - even those who are
probably getting closer to the cheese or who don't even like cheese!
I did a tongue in cheek piece many years ago during my first stint as the
editor of the PVRC newsletter back in the 1980s/early 90s that was based on the
predictable yearly round of west coast complaints about DX tests being slanted
towards the west coast and the usual east coast responses that domestic tests
were slanted towards the West coast, etc.
Back then, there were suggestions to move the Sprints earlier but many of the
west coast persuasion thought it would impact participation on the west coast
because of colliding with dinner time. Personally, I think N5KO and N2IC would
be battling for the top two positions even if they operated while eating
dinner, or were forced to move to KL7...
All the professional sports leagues have continual tweaking of the rules, good
to see same attitude being tried by the Sprint sponsors.
73 John K3TN
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