[PVRCNC] [PVRC] PVRC Circle

Fri Mar 3 20:41:22 EST 2017

Well, I guess if this dead horse were a cat we'd be on its 9th life being
beaten by all the history, explanations and justifications, and being
fortunate enough to be within what was ultimately decided is "THE [MAGIC]
CIRCLE" I shouldn't complain. However...
I find the whole idea of "unlimited" clubs and circles  to be a bit
oligarchic. After all, I think there are only four or five of consequence.
And each controls its own sphere of influence with PVRC being domestic like
Sweepstakes, YCCC being DX, and SMC and NCCC being also rans I suppose, with
little motivation to rearrange the chessboard.
Personally I would like to have the opportunity to know fellow club members
without having to go to Dayton or drive up to 300 miles for a meeting, and
I'd be just as happy if there were more alignment towards real geography
than database driven score compilations. How many people have actually seen
that infinitely small pin point that is the PVRC center Guy describes?
DelMarVa, NcSc, etc. could maybe put more competition into club competition.
We've got some great contesters on the NC and SC coasts who can't play at
all in club competitions. I also understand the problem of the CA folks.
Before the blow torches come out, please note I'm not agitating or leading a
charge. Got better things to do. Just sayin'
73,
Jim, K4QPL

-----Original Message-----
From: PVRC [mailto:pvrc-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Guy Olinger
K2AV
Sent: Friday, March 3, 2017 5:04 PM
To: Marty Bluhm <w8aks55 at gmail.com>
Cc: pvrc reflector <pvrc at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: Re: [PVRC] PVRC Circle

Time for a little tale about how PVRC got the HF circle it now has. A bit
long but this bears retelling every 4-5-6 years.

Once upon a time, the ARRL decided that all affiliated clubs should abide by
certain rules. Kind of arrogant in hindsight, but that was the only national
game in town. Over time this leaked over into contest rules, and a
175 mile radius was instigated to contain an ARRL sanctioned club that
wanted to compete in club scores. There were all kinds of inequities in that
method, but the powers that be decided that a circle was the rule, or, one
later exception, an entire ARRL section could be the limit. That still
stands.

There are better, fairer ways than a circle to geographically limit clubs,
particularly for sea-coast clubs like NCCC that unfairly, unavoidably loses
vast amounts of possible geography to the Pacific Ocean. But I digress...

That rule was done way, way, way before GPS satellites and the ability to
see where in a shopping center parking lot your wife was parked using Find
My Friends on a smart phone.

To describe a geographic circle, back in the days when maps were in atlases
or on folded paper, the only possible way was to spread out a folded paper
Eastern US highway map on a table.

Now go through your club roster for cities and mark out the geography of
your farthest out club roster. No need to do that for the guys living in the
middle.

Then get a compass (Google "geometry compass tool"). Find the scale of miles
and use it and a ruler to create a line that is 175 miles using that scale.

Now set the point of the compass on one end of the 175 mile line, and the
clamped pencil on the other. Now start drawing that circle around potential
centers until you find a center point where you hopefully can get all the
membership inside.

It's tough and no matter what you do there are edge-dwellers. The circle got
manually drawn with a fine felt tip "thick line" to help out a little with
the edge and to see it more clearly.

The math majors among us knew that it was quite approximate at the edges, no
matter what, because maps are flat and the earth is not. The earth isn't
even a true sphere, because the rotation of the earth causes it to bulge out
at the equator and in at the poles. But since you can't put a globe in your
pocket, what ain't flat gets mashed flat in order to print it. The
distortions are many, and unavoidable.

One distortion is related to the familiar distortion on a Mercator
projection that makes Greenland look as big as North America.

Then there's the little secret where the highway map makers squeeze one or
the other dimension to get all of a state inside a given standard printing
paper dimension. It's a **highway** map after all, who's it going to affect?
It's just that the scale of miles going left to right on the map isn't going
to be the same as the scale of miles going up and down.

And remember this is **BEFORE** the GPS stuff.

When GPS became available, it was possible to accurately check distances
from a published center latitude and longitude. NCCC of course started
running our members. And they found some well outside a **GPS** circle,
which were inside on the photo of the marked up highway map. PVRC had won
the SS unlimited club competition, and were due to be handed the gavel at
Dayton.

That was when the trustees, digging into all the facts, and arguing among
themselves for months on the PVRC officers listserve, finally unanimously
decided that the decent and classy, and "PVRC" thing to do was to give NCCC
the SS gavel, and get about the business of getting ourselves inside a GPS
drawn circle.

There actually are some distortions inside that, too, but way far smaller
than the highway map variety, distortions measured in feet instead of miles.

Now we had the problem of where to draw the new circle. It quickly became
obvious that all the way west to save WVA would drop out eastern high
scoring multi-op stations, flagship PVRC stations. All the way north to save
some hardy PA stations would lose 2/3 of that high scoring North Carolina
crowd, which often enough has been 20-25% of the club score.

It was Sophie's Choice reduced to a non-fatal, but still gut-wrenching
someone-has-to-be-told-they're-outside. Who the h*ll wants to do that? None
of us for sure, but it was our job to figure it out.

There was not a single circle center choice that did not bother ALL the
trustees for one reason or another. I don't remember who among us actually
discovered the current latitude/longitude. But it was like a miracle to
relieve our suffering. After all the prior hand-wringing, it was the least
galling of a stack of choices that were ALL galling. The exercise had gotten
us all to the point where we could all swallow the least objectionable and
get on with life.

The alternative would have been to tell the ARRL to go stuff it where the
sun doesn't shine, and just send in our scores anyway.

That one was and still is my personal abandon-all-civility choice. To my
mind the effect of the circle is that ARRL is dictating who can join our
club using a simple-minded scheme as a sledge hammer to fix a watch. (Now
ask me what I really think...)

The idea was posed to someone at ARRL that the circle should expand to 200
miles to accommodate the conversion to GPS to include those outside GPS, but
who were inside various less accurate manually derived circles. It was of
course rejected out of hand as we expected.

Every now and then someone gets on here and questions how the circle got
that way, and attributes to the "pickers of the circle" some kind of cruelty
or carelessness or aversion to residents of "other places".

It ain't so. There's no there, there.

Allusions of that sort are deeply insulting to the fine intent and care of
the elected trustees of the time who severely agonized over the issue and
spared the membership an **awful** discussion that could have blown the club
apart.

The reasons for the circle choice, if it has to be a 175 mile radius, still
stand today. As best as I can tell, the reasons driving the choice are even
more influential today as population centers have grown.

Still now, as back then and forever, my deepest apologies to those who wound
up outside our choice for ARRL circle. We didn't want to lose anybody.

My 27 dollars and 38 cents.

73, Guy K2AV
Trustee, PVRC

On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 11:33 AM, Marty Bluhm <w8aks55 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Whoa Steve!
> In reference to making a big impact, Oh wrong!
> I was dropped out of the circle not long after joining the club.
> I asked for reconsideration which was granted but nothing changed. I 
> corresponded with Jim WX3B and Pete N4ZR and it was explained to me 
> quite clearly. I am not a big time contester (score wise) and was 
> excited about joining a premier contesting club. However, in 10 years 
> the excitementhas worn off and the attitude is "just dont care".
> I asked a couple times for reconsideration which was granted with no 
> change in my status.
> At one time, i was 8 miles out of the ARRL circle (read SS).  In Nov i 
> would tear down my station , put in the RV and go to Shady Spring RV 
> park for primarily SS but some others also.  Life goes on and the RV was
sold.
> The RV park cut back to regular clients.
> I cleared my portable operation with Sean KX9X when he was contest
manager.
> I had to include the RV park and coordinates in my log. No problem, 
> had a good time, cold and snowy sometimes.
> Now it gets interesting.
> When Bud assumed the helm along with Tim in conjunction with the 5m 
> program changes, I got excited again. I contacted the RV park and they 
> offered an already setup RV for my use with 220 for the amp. I send an 
> email to the current contest director requesting clarification for my
operation.
> In the meantime, i ran the current circle coordinates and found that i 
> was
> 58 miles out of the circle vice 8 (nice round number 50, isnt it - Hmm).
> The RV park is no longer in the circle, so that shot down any portable 
> plans. I would have to go to Lewisburg approx 50 miles to get into the 
> circle.
> I informed the Contest Director of what happened and thanked him for 
> his time. Oh by the way, he approved my portable operation using the 
> previous guidelines.
> I passed on to Bud what happened and crawled back in my hole.
> Attitude, yes I have an attitude but I get on and if it coincedes with 
> a approved contest, i will submit my log with PVRC as my club.
>
> So Steve, there was some reaction to the change. This thread 
> unfortunately has opened some old wounds.
> I will bow out and crawl back into my snow covered hole.
> 73 to all & GL in the SSB contest.
> Marty
> W8AKS
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 10:56 Steve Bookout <steve at nr4m.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks, Dave.
>
> *B*ut, if the officers of PVRC got together and changed it because 
> what was felt as genuine issues, I have no issue with it. That's what 
> we have officers for and 'the masses' elected them to do things just like
this.
>
> Obviously, the change did not make a big impact on anyone's memory, as 
> it took an dug up 10 year old email to show this was done up front 
> where everyone could see what was happening. Because no one ever 
> seemed to remember, it was continually referred to as NW of Richmond, 
> when it hadn't been for years.
>
> Kinda like everyone calling an adjustable wrench, a Crescent wrench.
> Not quite the same, but you can't get most people to change calling it 
> one thing, over another.
>
> Steve, NR4M
>
>
> On 3/3/2017 9:33:AM, Dave K wrote:
> > TO All,
> > I agree with Steve, NR4M.  THe circle center was agreed to decades
> > ago.   Case closed, 73 Dave W4JVN
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