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With contesters expressing frustration and anger at the ARRL decision to end awards for the HQ category in the IARU HF Contest, a group of IARU Region 1 officials have started private discussions on ways to change the rules to maintain future HQ participation.
In a German language posting on the web site of the Union Schweizerischer Kurzwellen-Amateure, the Swiss national radio society which sponsors HB9HQ, the USKA reports that talks have started between European radio associations and the ARRL on a possible HQ rules change.
Whether that means rescinding the ARRL decision to ban any awards for HQ stations was unclear, as IARU Region 1 RF Committee Chairman Ulrich Muller DK4VW is setting closed door meetings on the matter at the Friedrichshafen convention in Germany later this month.
The USKA reported that DK4VW "definitely recommended" that HQ stations around the world "continue their preparations" and participate in the 2010 IARU HF Championships in July.
While there was no official comment on a way forward from the ARRL, it is clear that IARU Region I officials, led by DK4VW, want no public debate about what will happen with the HQ situation, as they detailed some of the matters in the latest HF Committee Newsletter, which can be downloaded from the Region I website.
Their initial talks included a thinly veiled swipe at this website, which has been reporting on the IARU scoring issue well before it landed on the radar of Region I officials.
"A privately owned commercial website has been widely used in the controversy about the 2009 results," the Region I document says on page 3, hinting that stories like this one "may damage the amateur radio service as a whole," as Mueller the argument for a completely closed Region I debate about the merits of a rule change on HQ stations.
"Besides that it makes no sense to clarify controversial understanding of the contest rules in such media by competitors themselves, especially without talking with each other first and trying to gain a balanced view of the matter."
There was no official comment on a way forward from the ARRL, as league officials spent the past week mainly dealing with heated email complaints from hams angry with the HQ decision.
The move to salvage the HQ competition in the IARU HF Contest comes as hams around the world bitterly criticized ARRL officials for their move, with some urging either new rules or even an independent contest body to adjudicate the HQ entries.
The battle stems from a fight over the 2009 IARU HQ competition, as the ARRL both rejected a protest from original first place finisher AO8HQ backed by the Spanish Union de Radioaficionados Espanoles (URE), but then refused to award a first place certificate to the Deustcher Amateur Radio Club and DA0HQ.
ARRL officials then stunned contesters by announcing that it would no longer make any awards or judge the logs of HQ stations.
"It is extremely disheartening and shameful to see how the Contest Committe is punishing the rest of HQs in the competition," read an official statement from the URE.
"I was shocked over the ARRL statement about the HQ Class," said Helmut Mueller DF7ZS.
"This one was certainly a gutless response, even to the point of permanently removing a very popular category because they simply didn't have the fortitude to adjudicate it properly," said David Gilbert AB7E.
"I think ARRL AC decision is absolutly pathethic," said Francisco Costa CT1EAT. "Cancel the HQ category just because they don't want to have this kind of trouble in the future, it's the worst decision they could have made."
Those sentiments were echoed repeatedly in emails to radio-sport.net, as some called for major changes in how the IARU Contest is handled.
"In my opinion the ARRL officers involved in the management of this contest have consistently over the years shown a high degree of incompetence in the adjudication of this contest," wrote Bob Carpenter G4BAH.
"The ARRL should relinquish the privilege of running this contest and let another more interested and capable society take over forthwith."
"So what will be the next step?" asked Ingus Selevskis YL2TW, a team member of YL4HQ. "Certficates for participating in all ARRL contests for every station?"
The criticism even included a salvo from the CQ WW DX Contest Committee, as CQ WW CC Member Doug Zwiebel KR2Q ripped the ARRL's IARU HF Championship decision on the CQ-Contest reflector.
"Any competition (that's what a Championship is, right?) requires judging / adjudication / enforcement of rules," Zwiebel wrote.
"Failure to do so means that the competition is meaningless. And I guess that's what now been done."
"What disappoints me most about this entire episode, is that we've managed to create an unnecessary divide in the contesting community," wrote Julius Fazekas N2WN.
"The very structure of the category encouraged poor behavior," wrote Ward Silver N0AX, who writes the ARRL Contest Update.
As Silver wrote on the CQ-Contest reflector that the HQ category "had been degenerating" for years, he also urged contesters to focus on the future.
"Will there be room for an HQ or HQ-like category in future IARU HF Championships? I can't say, but perhaps instead of trying to defend what had become rather a mess, what sort of competition and rules could be devised that would not include such powerful incentives to misbehave?"
Some were already taking up that challenge, arguing this is the perfect opportunity for the contest community to change things for the better - without the ARRL being involved.
"Do we really need the ARRL to adjudicate the HQ logs?" asked F2DX and F6FVY, the team leaders of TM0HQ.
"How about creating a multinational group to seriously check these logs, and publish results on the web? We could even tune the scoring and checking methods and adopt better rules (on unique QSOs for example) to ensure fairer adjudication and thus avoid abuse in the future," they wrote on the TM0HQ web site.
For many like Rag LA6FJA, who manages LN2HQ, the best option would have been a simple one - just change the scoring for HQ stations so that contacts with the HQ's home country would be zero points,
"It's bad that HQ stations will have meaningless competion. Many of us have many months of organization and work behind each HQ station," he told radio-sport.net
" Hopefully someone else than IARU/ARRL will arrange a world championship for HQ stations who are taking part in the IARU HF World Championship," said Ulf Schneider DK5TX, who said no HQ competition would be a loss for the entire contest community.
"Up to now this was the only contest where all top contest stations and all top operators from one country pulled together to win a world championship," Schneider wrote to radio-sport.net.
"It was also one of the few contests where operators from different and competing contest clubs worked side by side. Perhaps it was not intended to be a world championship for HQ stations, but in fact it was exactly that for the people involved in the HQ teams. Not only for the teams from DL or EA, but for all the 62 HQs."
Since HQ stations continue to be ‘multipliers’ under the rules, their participation remains exceptionally important to the overall enjoyment by contest participants worldwide, and the rivalry between national societies was an incentive for them to field the best possible HQ operations possible.
I’m saddened to learn some of the most active HQ groups have decided to throw in the towel and not compete as the result of the ARRL’s internal Awards Committee decision.
I can understand their disappointment – the ARRL’s ruling essentially says HQ station participation is not considered all that important to the success of the event.
In reality, everyone’s participation is important, but now HQ stations have been effectively cut off at the knees and are not longer part of the competition… where is the incentive?. So why bother going through all the effort?
The ARRL did a big “duck and weave” in their response. This was a ‘political’ hot potato for them, and they took the path which they had hoped would lead to the minimum amount of fallout.
Unfortunately their spineless decision, which effectively writes off last year’s effort for the top HQ groups, exhibited a striking lack of leadership and support for contesting in general. Sometimes its necessary to bite the bullet and do what's right, take a stand.
The ARRL decided to deflect confrontation, and made a ruling that exhibited their unwillingness to rule authoritatively.
The IARU has become one of the most popular international contest events of the year – its format is unique in many ways (a different multiplier scheme, 24 hour format, CW, SSB or combined competition catagories, etc.) which has added to its attraction for many operators, particularly those in the Northern Hemisphere operating under summer conditions.
HQ station contracts often represent a significantly high percentage of multipliers worked by casual contestants.
It is intuitively counter-productive to make a rule change which discourages HQ station participation, given how important contacts made with them are to everyone’s score.
The IARU rules for HQ stations had a flaw. Contacts made within one’s own country count like any other contact in their zone.
For countries with a large and organized ham population (like Germany, Russia, and the USA) the ‘potential’ for abuse was there - just a small effort on the part of the contest communities in these and other countries could produce spectacularly exaggerated results which benefited there home HQ station score.
I’m sure many of you have over the years looked at the band breakdowns, and its obvious there were abuses by some countries – 1300 or more 160 meter phone contacts made by an HQ station in July simply doesn’t happen by accident!
It's the equivalent of stuffing the ballot box, and I’m sure the majority of the calls that appear in those 160 logs don’t find their way into many others.
Eliminating national ‘cheerleading’ and bring the HQ stations back into the competition, can be accomplshed easily. Assign ZERO points to in-country QSOs made by HQ stations.
The potential for abuse is eliminated.
John Crovelli W2GD/P40W
Would changing the rules to give zero points for HQ contacts with its home country be an easy answer to this dispute?
Or should contesters go around the ARRL and engineer their own contest within a contest?
Send your opinions to radio-sport.net
