Field Day Rule change letter

[Karl Larsen]

    I sent this to the ARRL contest people who are on vacation now,
yesterday. It is exactly this:


Dear Sir:

        My name is Karl Larsen and I want to change the rules for the Field
Day Contest. You have over the several years made it attractive to operate
QRP from batteries (7.2.1). My experience has been that CW QRP works just
great but SSB QRP is very difficult.

        Some friends in Albuquerque were 7A and QRP Battery and did this:

 We had 5 stations on the air nearly all the time (digital,
phone, 20 cw, 40 cw, and 80/15 cw), plus another two that made brief
appearances and a 6-meter station that jumped in whenever the band
opened to anywhere. There were 8 operators, and no one got much sleep.

Ended up with a little over 16k points. Off the top of my head, here
are the round numbers:

Digital station: 100 QSOs, a mix of rtty and psk.
CW: 100 QSOs on 80,
           500 on 40 mtrs,
            600 on 20 mtrs,
              100 on 15 mtrs.
HF phone: 100 QSOs total. QRP phone with bad antennas is very rough.
VHF: 60 QSOs, all 6-mtr ssb.

All equipment was QRP (5 Watts or less: Three K2s, two K1s, QRP+,
IC703, FT817), battery operated. No generators, but lots of big

        As he says "QRP Phone with bad antennas is very rough. The poor
phone guys got just 100 contacts in 24 hours. They got 1200 contacts on CW.
This is data from 2006 Field Day.

        I have the current FD rules and direct your attention to 7.2.5 which
says this:

         7.2.5. The power multiplier for an entry is determined by the
maximum output power used by any transmitter
         used to complete any contact during the event. (Example: a group
has one QRP station running 3 Watts and a second station running 100 Watts,
 the power multiplier of 2 applies to all contacts made by
 the entire operation).

        I would like 7.2.5 to read:

        The power multiplier for an entry can be different depending on the
transmitter power. The QRP station(s) might have a power multiplier of 5
while
SSB contacts have a multiplier of 2. The logs need to state the power level
used to make the contacts.

        In a large FD location this would be easy. The SSB HF and SSB VHF
would be at 100 Watts and will be added with a power multiplier of 2.
The QRP
CW stations would be careful to mark their logs with power and multiplier of
5.

        This change will require a change in the Summary Sheet but it will
not be hard to do.


        For the past 4 years the CW people in my Ham Club have gone to the
mountains for cooler weather and good camping, while the SSB people stay in
town and work out of an air conditioned building. I want us all to go to the
mountains and the SSB people run 100 Watts so they can work lots of stations
and the CW people do their usual things.

        I think this change allowing multiple power levels in a group will
change how people do Field Day for the better.


73 Karl Larsen, K5DI

    I would like anyone of a like mind to send a similar message to them at:

[hidden email]

karl
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