[PVRCNC] Big 'ole dot

[mike at bentwire.net]

There is/has been one of those never ending discussions on the CQ-Contest
reflector about the fairness/unfairness of the current CQWW scoring system.
ZL2HAM contributed some interesting graphics. I copied his message below
for completeness. He plotted the geolocation for all of the calls
submitting logs for CQWW 2012. If you look at the US map, you'll lots of
little dots scattered around the country representing the 'usual suspects'
including a dense field marking the DC-New England corridor. What jumped
out at me was the rather large single dot centered on ...... wait for it
..... Raleigh. There are only three (maybe 4) large dots on the US map
where the concentration of entries is high enough to blur the individual
dots into a singular large dot. The other areas of high concentration are
in south central KS and north of Reno, NV. Huh? There is a smaller 'large'
dot on the WV-KY line. Another huh?

Anyway, now we can see why the competition is so tough locally.

Mike N4GU


Message: 6
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2013 18:03:50 +1300
From: "Rick Kiessig" <kiessig at gmail.com>
To: "'Reflector Reflector'" <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQ WW Scoring System needs revision?
Message-ID: <02ad01ceefe5$10869dd0$3193d970$@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"

For those who may not have looked at the geographical disparities in CQWW,
you may want to check out the maps at the links below:

World:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48950365/cqww-cw-world-2012.PNG

Europe:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48950365/cqww-cw-eu-2012.PNG

US:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48950365/cqww-cw-us-2012.PNG

I generated these by geolocating all of the calls that submitted logs in
CQWW CW 2012 (this year's aren't available yet). The dot sizes are
proportional to the number of calls that resolved to the same latitude /
longitude. I did the same thing for CQWW SSB, with similar results.

If you live in the Eastern US, or in the middle of EU, or right next to a
zone or continent boundary, then obviously you have a vested interest in
keeping the existing scoring system.

If the contest goals include attracting more DX to the competition and
making scores more comparable globally, then I think it's obvious that
scoring needs to be different.

However, from much of the discussion I've seen so far, it seems like the
opposite is true; perhaps the real goal is discouraging DX from the
competition (as in having any real chance of winning), to have it be
mainly
a US/EU thing. That's certainly the vibe I'm getting.

73, Rick ZL2HAM / ZM1G