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The 24-Hour DX Contest Challenge
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by VE7MH on February 28, 2003
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I like the idea of a 24 hour contest, with the time segments chosen by the contestant. This offers great flexibilty, and should encourage contesting by those who have not participated previously.
Good luck with the endevour.
Murray Hainer
VE7MH
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The 24-Hour DX Contest Challenge
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by kr2q on March 1, 2003
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Gents: Your concept (encouraging more activity through recognition for "less than 48 die-hards") is a great idea. You have also now learned of the possible negative impact of such an option.
Your next step, to offer another survey is also great, but this time your implementation, IMHO, is off base. You have over-restricted the options (to just one, namely 24 hours). I would suggest a much broader (though not open-ended) survery tool. One suggestion might be to offer the participate (of the survery) a list of ranges for hours of operation and see where that goes. You could also couple it to the survey-takers past contest experience. For example:
I.
In past contests and on average, how many hours did you operate?
_less than one hour
_1 to 3.9 hours
_4 to 7.9 hours
_8 to 12 hours
_12 to 24 hours
_25 to 30 hours
_31 to 48 hours
If you selected any category below 25 to 30 hours, please answer the following:
[then explain the CWC concept]
II.
What do you think would be the ideal time duration for a CWC?
_4 hours
_6 hours
_8 hours
_12 hours
_16 hours
_24 hours
III.
I would increase my "average" operating time by up to _____ hours in order to achieve recognition via the CWC.
_� hours, or "I would not change my operating habits"
_1 hour
_2 hours
_3 hours
_4 hours
_6 hours
_8 hours
_10 hours
Just my 2 cents (maybe a nickel's worth here).
de Doug KR2Q
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The 24-Hour DX Contest Challenge
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by VE4XT on March 2, 2003
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I think the implementation plan by Mike and Pete is logical, not off-base, in that they have kept the initial question simple and the propose to move toward a more extensive test later.
Making the initial question more complicated assumes enough interest in the topic that people will take the time to answer a more detailed questionnaire. If that assumption is faulty, then so are the results.
As to the time line of a 24-hour contest, I would favour the hours be chosen by the participant. It adds more strategy and moves closer to the goal, IMHO, of increasing participation. Family committments often mean that a contiguous 24-hour period is not available, but 24 hours spread across the contest period is. That it means that stations are likely to choose high-band openings to work is not, in my view, as important as increasing participation, particularly since low-band DXing simply is not possible for some ops, no matter how extensive an antenna system they may have. (Here in the black hole, you can't work what you can't hear. And you can't hear much from here, even with the best listening antennas around. The signals often simply do not arrive here at any level.)
73, kelly
ve4xt
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The 24-Hour DX Contest Challenge
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by N4KG on March 3, 2003
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CWC comments:
I think it would be useful to include options for 30 and 36 hours in the survey.
IMO, 24 hours puts noticable limits on the amount of time one can spend on the Low Bands while maintaining a presense on the high bands at prime run time. I like the idea of a 30 hour limit which allows for a 'useful' amount of Low Band time, full high band run time, and sufficient sleep. At 36 hours, (which is my typical maximum operating time), there is a noticable lack of sleep, especially the first night.
Tom N4KG (ex: W8FAW, WA0SDC)
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The 24-Hour DX Contest Challenge
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by n4ogw on March 3, 2003
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I'd love a 24/30 hour category. Being on an academic schedule, the CQWW and ARRL DX contests always come near the busiest time of the year for me. I've sometimes do a single-band effort, where at least I can sleep when the band is dead.
If not doing single band, I usually only get on for an hour or two during the ARRL/CQWW. With a 24 or 30 hr category I'd definitely operate more, and you might get that MS mult on all bands...
Tor
N4OGW/5
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Great idea
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by k2ua on March 4, 2003
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Neat idea--one whose time has come. I don't need any encouragement to do full-time efforts on CW, but I would try this in one or two SSB contests. It would probably have gotten me on the air this weekend for ARRL DX SSB.
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The 24-Hour DX Contest Challenge
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by YU1WC on March 5, 2003
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I like the idea very much, it would encourage more people to participate in the contests more seriously.
Some suggestions:
- Operating more than 24 hours should be allowed. The contester then would chose the 24h slot he/she wants to submit for scoring, the rest is for checklog. This is not encouraging for those who are _really_ time restricted, but in the other hand, brings more activity. We want more stations in the contest, during the whole 48h period, anyway.
- The 24 hour period submitted for scoring must be a continuous one. If it is a competitive category, everyone should be in same position, looking for a best 24h slot during the contest. Otherwise, people aspiring to win would run the whole 48 (36) hours, and then pick up only the intervals the periods of best openings, of best multiplier activity, etc.
- Still, I do not know how intentional repetitive contacts (dupes)could be discoureged. For example, a contester aspiring to win in a 24h category acording to this suggested rules, would operate 48 (36) hours. After the contest, the software checking the log would calculate the 24h slot with the best score. Therefore, the same multipliers would be worked repetively (every six hours, for example), just in case, because one does not know in advance which 24h slot will give best score. That strategy is justified, bud leads to confusion, a lot of dupes and "qso b4" on the band.
- In my opinion, rest time is not necessary in a 24h contesting period. 24h gives you a full cycle of low/high band openings and it is up to you to chose the best strategy. But if the majority wants to have a rest period, than OK, my suggestions remain the same for something like a 30h continuous time slot, with a 6 h rest period incorporated in it, for example.
- When rules are complicated, they tend to complicate further, as we see :). To make it simple, why not take the rule from the IOTA contest (there is a 12h category in a 24h contest). The rule there says: "Multi-operator entries must be 24 hours. In the 12-hour categories, operation need not be for one continuous 12-hour period but, once operation has commenced, off periods should be a minimum of 60 minutes."
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The 24-Hour DX Contest Challenge
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by k1ir on March 5, 2003
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I like this idea. Nice job, Pete, Mike and Sylvan. My comments and suggestions:
1. Limit the size of the off-time chunks to a minimum of 1 hour.
2. Permit listening during off-time - you can't enforce "no listening" rules.
3. Recognize as many of the existing categories as possible, and permit an entrant to submit scores in as many categories as they like. 24 hour entries in 160 and 10 meter categories from a single station could both be competitive and might encourage more than 24 hours of total operation from a competitor.
4. What will happen to participation? Well, let's think about this. If I was a person who wasn't going to operate at all, I would probably operate the highest rate hours/bands. For the cw contests over the coming years, this probably means 40/20/15 in the day/evening. If I'm a non-US guy, I still won't skip work or school on Friday or Monday - I'm not that serious!
If I were a more serious competitor looking to "downgrade", I would probably plan to focus on the same objectives - the high-rate hours and being able to work on Friday/Monday.
So, I think some participation will SHIFT from the start and end of the contest period to the "middle" hours, and the traditionally high-rate hours will get higher while the current "doldrums" could get worse.
I think the question of OVERALL participation is much more difficult to estimate. What is "participation" anyway? I guess I would say its simply total number of hours operated by all entrants. I didn't look at actual data, but I bet there are a lot more scores submitted under 24 hours than over. If we assume that an equal percentage of each group (above and below 24 hours) will move toward 24 hours, then I think we will have a net increase in participation.
This proposal has little downside rlsk. I support giving it a try - regardless of survey results!
73!
Jim K1IR
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The 24-Hour DX Contest Challenge
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by K3WW on March 5, 2003
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Just to make things more competitive, wouldn't it be nice to permit full time operators to submit a portion of their score, say their first 24 hours of operation,just to see how they stack up against guys that try to operate during the best hours? It would be a little more complicated since published scores would not tell the story. It would solve the problem of a few folks cutting their hours to gain an advantage in the Contest Within a Contest
73 Chas K3WW
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RE: The 24-Hour DX Contest Challenge
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by n4ogw on March 6, 2003
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>Just to make things more competitive, wouldn't it be nice to permit >full time operators to submit a portion of their score, say their first >24 hours of operation,just to see how they stack up against guys >that try to operate during the best hours? It would be a little more >complicated since published scores would not tell the story. It >would solve the problem of a few folks cutting their hours to gain >an advantage in the Contest Within a Contest
>73 Chas K3WW
You would have to very careful how you define which of the 24 out of 48 is taken, to make it fair for the "real" 24 hour people. If I operated 48 and wanted to enter the limited time class, I could easily write a computer program to analyze my log and "optimize" the choice of which 24 hours to submit :)
Tor
N4OGW
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