Something old and something new
 

KØHB wrote:
wrote in message
.
...


IOW, the competition would continue, just in a different way. But the
average operator would still not be able to beat the big guns, because
the true competitors would still have whatever advantages
were to be had.

And wailing and knashing of teeth would still be heard throughout the "
Land of
Average".

....or even gnashing. ;-)

"Average operators" (those who voted for Diana Moon Glompers) would cry
"unfair".

There are always those who raise the that cry. I think they've always
existed. While as a much younger fellow, I admired those with the
wherewithal to own vast expanses of land, who could afford to erect
numerous towers to the sky, populated with enormous antenna arrays, I
admired more the fellows who were real pileup artists. Those could slip
in and out of a pile in the wink of an eye.

Let's just take one real-life example, not a strained speculation. SO2
R
(SingleOp2Radio operating style) is a developed skill (not a technology
). It
takes work to perfect, but once mastered it dramatically tilts the fiel
d in
favor the operator who uses it. Join the CQ-Contest email reflector, a
nd
mention you'll be operating "SO2R" in SS CW next November. The "averag
e
operators who want rules to level the field" will rise up bemoaning the

"unfairness of it all" and "there ought to be a rule".

I read K3ZO's article on SO2R some time back and gathered that I don't
have the necessary skills or dollars to try it. I enter so few contests
with serious intent these days that I don't know if I want to even give
it a try. My station would require some advances in antenna
switching/control before it would even become feasible.

If radiosport contesting (the last great hope of saving ham radio, IMNS
HO) is to
live up to it's potential to advance the state of the radio art, then w
e need to
structure contest rules which encourage and nurture skill and technolog
y
developers, and do not reward "average" operators or "average" stations.

I'll go along with you on this one, Hans, though there have been a
number of things which I thought to be unfair/unethical over the years.
Among them were rubber clocking (pretty much universally outlawed now),
a few fellows (notably Europeans operating from Africa) who were running
multiple high power amps on multiple arrays on the same band
simultaneously. The latter involved not only an unfair advantage but an
illegal one.

I think I can tell the following without creating scandal now, since
most of the attendees are dead: I departed a meeting of what was (at
the time) a well-known Cincinnati DX Club after some old timers I'd
previously admired began discussing plans for the upcoming Field Day
operation. This group always operated as a low power entry. At this
particular meeting they began talking about which ops would bring their
linear amps. That was the first and last meeting I attended.

Dave K8MN