Field Day, New Rules for an Old Favorite

N3DER Alex Fraser [email protected]  Comments welcome.

     Field Day is an ARRL sponsored event. It is a contest where ham radio organizations and individuals compete nationally (Starting 2003 internationally) for points. Some groups take this competition more seriously than others, but the spirit of competition is always there and for participants this competition shapes the experience.
    Field Day actually has two components, contesting as I have mentioned and emergency preparedness. I feel that over the years the contest component has taken over the event. This is the way things are and is a natural consequence of competition. Those who want to win will take over as they are competitive and are vying for  position.
    Over the years communications has changed a great deal. The actual need for, and role of amateurs in emergency situations has changed. I believe the Field Day contest rules contest do not reflect these changes in need and role. Contests and contesters have risen to control the game and in so doing have made the competition an end in itself. The actual content of the contact has been trivialized (How often have you heard "I copy you 5-9,  5-9 could you repeat your call?"). Clubs in the same jurisdiction have turf wars, changing band conditions cause angry exchanges on the air, competition rules, emergency preparedness suffers.
    Cooperation in getting the message through is what is needed for effective emergency communications. How to achieve this cooperation is a problem and is what this essay is about.  I propose that by carefully introduced rule changes the most competitive movers and shakers will cooperate.  If contesters know they can not win unless they cooperate, then you will see cooperation become the norm. I must add here that cooperation does exist within each contest group. Incredible cooperation for volunteers, I do not mean to slight them in any way. The point is to let this cooperation extend beyond the boundaries of each club and become regional in nature. This scale of cooperation most closely matches the needs of emergency communications where hams might be the only link available.


Don't Panic!

    Change can be hard, so I have tried to keep the shock to a minimum. The idea is to set up the conditions for change by adding rules that promote change and then letting competition do the rest. Those who change should get the awards and those that don't change should find it harder (but not impossible) to win. All carrots and no stick makes for a happy contented donkey!
    Here are some selling points;


The Nitty Gritty

    The basis of this plan is that a participating  organization's point score will be delivered to authorized ARRL data centers in as near to "real time" as possible. I call it RTS (Real Time Scoring) Units designated "N" are sent the traffic (score reports) from the competitors and deliver it to an ARRL data center. The benefits of reporting your score to an "N" unit for forwarding to the data center will more points for the same number of contacts. The "N" units will also benefit by receiving credit for each contact report that passes through their hands. Participants not reporting theirs scores that make a contact with a organization that are forwarding their scores will also benefit, although not as well as those organizations who are forwarding scores.

Details and Definitions
 

Unit
   I have used a couple of terms interchangeably, participating organizations, competitors and units are all defined as an entity that will under a callsign submit a log of their contacts for points. I like the term "units" best. They use the regular Field Day  designations as A, B, C, D, E or N with the appropriate numbers for transmitters used or in the case of N, client units served.

ARRL Data Center (ARRL_DC)
    Is a place with an actual or virtual connection to the HQ ARRL Data Center where the scores would be received and tabulated. That is it can be an internet connection. First hop from any unit on the way to the ARRL_DC would have to be via ham radio (no mode defined).

"N" (net) units
    This is a new class in the contest. They exist only to forward data from  other contesting units.  "N" units need not have a site, but can if they like. They also could exist at their client sites. They of course must have a presence at the ARRL_DC. All communications from client units to "N" units not on  their site must be by ham radio. Data delivered to the ARRL Data Centers must be in a special file format. "N" units would have a number designation representing the number of client units they serve. For example "3N" meaning they have 3 clients. Should they have 4 clients they would be "4N" and so on. It would be OK for a regular unit to have a "N" unit attached and part of the same organization. The designation would be just "N" with no number. "N" units can share a callsign with another unit or use their own. This will affect the point score.

The Exchange
    A typical exchange under current rules might be "N3DER 1C VA" or "W4IY 9A VA". Now say these two units are participating using the Real Time Scoring (RTS) rules. W4IY has an attached "N" unit under the call W4IY  which serves these two clients, W4IY 9A and N3DER 1C. Their exchanges would become respectfully "W4IY 9A 2N VA" and "N3DER 1C 2N VA" . When W4IY 2N sent the data to ARRL_DC they would send "W4IY 2N &W4IY 9A VA &N3DER 1C VA" as a special cabrillo file header. I used "&" as a delimiter only as an example, others could be used, whatever would be convenient. One reason for the the extra character would be to facilitate  computer identification of the individual client units served by that particular "N" unit. This would allow the building of routes to all participating units and for some scoring schemes a very large network "Dup." table. I have left off the ARRL section on the "N" unit exchange. An "N" unit could serve clients in different ARRL sections.

Scoring
    Field day is a game. Games can be used to teach and train and it is played for points. Once you establish a point based game you can affect the outcome of the game by controlling the awarding of points. You therefor can affect participants behavior during the game by altering the point scheme. One way of altering the results  would be simply adding points for certain behavior, another way would be point multipliers. I would primarily use the point multiplier scheme as it allows for easier tweaking of the rules as the years pass. You can just change the multiplier to get the required behavior. The one exception that comes to mind is the combining of N unit scores with other scores, this would be simple addition.
    With the above in mind I throw out these off the cuff point modifiers knowing they will be tweaked to meet the now unknown conditions which arise from implementation of this scheme.

- Any unit  would receive 2x the points for each contact reported through RTS (except N units)
- Any unit contacting and logging a unit participating in RTS would get 1.25x the points for that contact.
- Mobile units would receive an additional 2x points for reporting through RTS (4x total)
- N units would receive 1 point for each contact they report from any of the clients that they serve.
- If a unit is both a regular RTS participant and a N unit then the scores are added.

Examples.

    First the players.
    * W4IY 9A 2N VA client to W4IY 2N for RTS
    * W4IY 2N    N unit sponsered and collocated with  W4IY 9A 2N VA
    * N3DER  1C  VA. Is a client of W4IY's RTS N unit.
    * W3DID is running 2A MD with no N unit affiliation.
    * KD4CBD 2N does RTC only and has 2 clients
    * AA4HS  1B VA and is a client of KD4CBD's  2N unit for RTS

An exchange on 40 meter SSB.

- QRZ this is W4IY calling QRZ field day
- W4IY this is W3DID
- W3DID this is W4IY 9A 2N VA your report please
- W4IY this is W3DID 2A MD QSL?
- copy W3DID 2A MD good luck in the contest

    For this exchange W4IY gets 1 point for the contact times 2 for RTS. Since W4IY is sponsoring W4IY 2N. They get a point for the RTS transfer to  the ARRL_DC.  Add the two scores for a total of 3 points.
    W3DID would get 1 point for the contact times 1.25 for contacting a N affiliated station giving a total of 1 1/4 points.

Another exchange on 40 meter SSB.

- QRZ this is W4IY calling QRZ field day
- W4IY this is AA4HS
-  this is W4IY 9A 2N VA your report please
- W4IY this is AA4HS 1B 2N VA QSL?
- copy AA4HS 1B 1N VA  good luck in the contest

    For this exchange W4IY gets 1.25 point for contacting a N station times 2 for  RTS giving 2.5 points. Since W4IY is sponsoring W4IY 2N. They get a point for the RTS transfer to  the ARRL_DC.  Add the two scores for a total of 3.5 points.
    AA4HS gets 1.25 point for contacting a N station times 2 for  RTS giving 2.5 points.
    KD4CBD 2N gets 1 point for handling the RTS transfer for AA4HS.

Another exchange on 10 meter SSB.

- QRZ this is AA4HS calling QRZ field day
- AA4HS this is N3DER mobil
-  this is AA4HS 1B 2N VA your report please
- AA4HS this is N3DER 1C 2N VA QSL?
- copy N3DER 1C 2N VA  good luck in the contest

    AA4HS gets 1.25 point for contacting a N station times 2 for  RTS giving 2.5 points.
    KD4CBD 2N gets 1 point for handling the RTS transfer for AA4HS.
    N3DER gets 1.25 point for contacting a N station times 4 for mobil RTS giving 5 points.
    W4IY 2N gets 1 point for handling the RTS transfer for N3DER. Since W4IY 9A sponsors W4IY 2N they  get 1 point added to their score.

Authenticating the Points

    N unit report scores to ARRL_DC in as close to real time as possible. This time is tweakable and to start I would allow 2 hours to get the scores delivered AND processed. N units would cache the score reports and then FTP them to ARRL_DC. The score reports would have the contact times in a Special file format and the uploaded file would have a creation date. The receive time  of the score report files would be logged in the ARRL_DC server. The files them selves would named  as an example W4IY_2N.001 for the first one and W4IY_2N.002 for the second one and so on.
    A special header would be needed in the  files sent. W4IY 2N &W4IY 9A VA &N3DER 1C VA would indicate W4IY 2N as the N station reporting. If the call after the first & matches then the unit after the first & gets 1 point for each point given the N unit. If not then process each call after a & according to the regular rules. For each call after the  & delimiter a section would be provided in the file marked with the delimiter $ followed by the exchange. So the two groups in the examples file would look like
$W4IY 9A VA
all W4IY's log data here
$N3DER 1C VA
all N3DER's data here
    In the data area a special modified Cabrillo format could be used (http://www.kkn.net/~trey/cabrillo/spec.html).
    I might mention here that the real time concept would not have to be accomplished by the ARRL_HQ  for the first couple of years. All the data needed for authentication would be available for latter processing. That is because every thing is time stamped.  Eventually when we have the skills it could be done in true real time.

Results, Strategies and Comments

    I would hope that strategies for winning points would evolve into a very effective emergency network.  I could conceive of a couple of point strategies that would circumvent the modification of behavior, that is not promote emergency preparedness, however since you could tweak the point multipliers year to year you would not give any group time to perfect these anti social gaming techniques.
    I gave many points to mobile stations using RTS as I think this would be quite a technical feat and would give great capability  to any disaster relief effort. Also it might spawn more mobile operation as clients of their club N units. Some interesting point total differences between a strategy of a large number of stations  9A 12A etc.  versus running N units with clients could be seen. A little applied math might reveal some interesting analyses of open networks working in varied band conditions and how scores are affected. If the points reflect real emergency needs then a new ways of handling emergency traffic could be modeled and studied
    I have considered, but not included was an adjustment for population density. I would be most interested in how the different areas adapted to the new rules.
    Extra points for eliminating the internet in reporting scores also occurred to me, as well as multi hop points reporting to ARRL_HQ. I feel we just aren't ready for this yet, but it would be a nice goal for 2010