[Cwo] CW Open Rules

Wed Nov 19 18:26:42 PST 2014

I’m in agreement with Rob.  I don’t think one-off tinkering will help us and am more in  favor of consistency so the contest becomes uniform.  It might be worth a little analysis to find EU and JA’s who have participated in the past but not this time.  A quick email to them might get some interesting info if they take time to reply.

I agree with Alan re the minimum number of Q’s for an award.  

I’m also a bit ambivalent about the multi stuff.  Now here again it might be of interest to pick out the top multi-single and multi-2 stations and shoot them an email to see if they would be interested.

For what it’s worth…

Pete, W1RM

From: Cwo [mailto:cwo-bounces at kkn.net] On Behalf Of Alan Maenchen
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2014 6:34 PM
To: Rob K6RB
Cc: cwo at kkn.net
Subject: Re: [Cwo] CW Open Rules

I agree with most of the above. I thought we covered publicity pretty well, but something didn't go right. I wonder how much the conflict with Sprint caused some of that drop. (Sprint guys also noticed a drop). But that's not common. I think that particular weekend onflict only happens occasionally.

The time changes MIGHT have caused reduced participation by EU and AS stations. I sort of thought the change was only an advantage to NA stations and disadvantage to EU.

I'm not hot on the M/S idea although I wouldn't rule it out. It complicates things from the management point of view, and for a 4 hour event I doubt it would be very popular. 

Assisted vs non-assisted:  Again, this is only a 4 hour event and as such I don't think assisted brings much if any advantage. We do have some data on that although not complete. To simplify the event, I would simply stick with the original rule which is to allow it, but track it in the results. Unfortunately not all logs say if they are or are not using assisted. We might modify the log submission process to ask specifically if they were or were not assisted. Same with SO1R vs SO2R.

For awards, I don't think increasing the 100 Q requirement helps. In fact, it may hurt if some of the top guys think it's not achievable and therefore don't enter at all.

73, Alan  AD6E / KH6TU

On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Rob K6RB <k6rb at baymoon.com> wrote:

All,

I guess I don’t want to make a knee jerk reaction. It would be interesting to see which non-US stations that participated in 2013 did not participate in 2014. We could even email a sample of them to get input on why they did not play in 2014.

The Q number tracks the log numbers, so no surprise. I don’t think the issue with sprint was an issue because it would not have affected non-US participants, and that’s where we saw the major downturn.

I had always hoped that JA participation would grow to where it had an impact, as it does in ARRL DX. But I’m not sure why it remains lackluster. I was buoyed by the increase in EU in 2013 but apparently it was transitory.

I think we need to dig into what’s up and find out why we lost ground. What did we do different in 2013 than in 2014? Have all other contests shown some attrition, too?

As for multi-op category, I’m neutral. I kind of like the SO only nature of CW Open. It may be that having assisted and non-assisted lumped together has become dissuasive to some non-assisted participants. I know, as a non-assisted, that I could be increasing my score significantly by using spotting or RBN. Perhaps assistend and non-assisted need to be separately awarded?

We may have an opportunity with teams to increase participation, but I think it would require awards, not just bragging rights. There’s no question that team competition is what drives Sweepstakes, for example.

Anyway, let’s not simply react. Let’s do some digging and make some informed decisions.

Rob K6RB

From: D Faklis via Cwo <mailto:cwo at kkn.net>  

Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2014 2:37 PM

To: cwo at kkn.net 

Subject: [Cwo] CW Open Rules

All,

A couple of questions:

1.  The current rules state the following:

"Minimum of 100 QSOs (after log checking) is required to win an award."

Should we require more Q's (say 200 or 300) to win a high combined score trophy?  Not a concern in Region 2, but it plays a role in Regions 1 and 3 until we get more participation from those regions.

2.  Should we consider a multi-op category for 2015 and beyond?  Multi Multi does not seem appropriate, but Multi Single or M/2 might be fun.  What are your thoughts?  Pitfalls?  Advantages?

The 2014 CWO report is nearing completion, thanks to Alan's AD6E great work.  It will be posted on our website and will appear in DEC Solid Copy

Sneak Peek:  95K Q's in 2013, 55K Q's in 2014;  847 logs in 2013, 495 in 2014....only a handful from outside US this year in big contrast to last year.

2015 CWO is September 5

  _____  

_______________________________________________
Cwo mailing list
Cwo at kkn.net
http://www.kkn.net/mailman/listinfo/cwo

_______________________________________________
Cwo mailing list
Cwo at kkn.net
http://www.kkn.net/mailman/listinfo/cwo

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.kkn.net/pipermail/cwo/attachments/20141119/616374e6/attachment.html>