In a non competitve event all entrants do partecipate to be present and the final list is quite a relative detail, in the other hand a competitive event evaluates just the final results and one or more awarded winners always come out.
An amateur radio Contest is a competitive event although anyone can decide which level of competition is more suitable for own desires and available time, or if the event itself is only an occasion for someting else, like to catch some new one, and the competition is a totally missed point. Since we are on a contesters web page, it’s presumed the competition is what’s counts and nothing else.
Well, an amateur radio contest is all but not easy to win, even if the challange is with a local friend.
The earth is round and propagation is substantially different depending by band, latitude and longitude or by seasonal conditions. Continents have different pouplations and people is not equally distributed around the world.
This unequity sets different chances and different opportunities among the entrants and obviously someone is greatly favoured while others are deeply penalyzed.
If this unbalance is true and big on a large scale, and who runs for an absolute victory has to move in those areas where advantages are maximal, in the around of any local geographical region there is a certain levelage where individual skill, strategy and setup will determine the final result and the competition can be very hard and challenging.
Without dropping into small details. if one aims to run for a continental leadership or to beat his friend living one Km away, before the contest starts it’s wise to study the rules, and the rules under the perspective of own equipments and skill in order to evaluate which category is better suited with own conditions, if something has to be enhanced or simply how to obtain maximal results by the existing setup.
Carefully reading and understanding the contest rules is the first step have success. One has infact to understand what’s allowed and what’s not, but basically how the score is composed and obtained.
Each contest has its own rules and requires its own strategy, within the best general strategy there is to choose a tailored one that takes in account personal advantages (i.e. a monobander) and gaps .
A contest score is generaly composed by QSO points and multipliers but points and multipliers weight, or available multiplier number, or proportion between QSOs and mults, largely varyies depending the specific contest.
Whitout any doubt, an all band entry is the most complex one and requires more skill and energy although with all the bands available the fun won’t last until the last second of the contest.
This is a very personal point, but a single op. all band is a stuff for contesters with experience and skill, at leat in terms of real competitivity. If one hasn’t the chance (luck) to have had a good mentor or hasn’t experience of presence and didn’t operated in competitive Multi Operator stations, a single op all band is not the best choice and self training doesn’t pay the time investment.
Although someone claims and suggest to enhance own skill comparing year after year the own results and not careing what others do, it will never be enough enforced that self training is a time consuming process where it’s often difficult to realize mistakes and frequently Hams lose their confidence and give up before they really learned something.
At least in my opinion, a single band entry, obviously with a decent setup, is definitely much more didactical and satisfactory in terms of results for the “lone wolf” unexperienced contester, All considered, with a single band entry it’s possible to better concentrate in important details like installing a better antenna and studying best the propagtion and the strategy for that band.
In the other hand, a single band entry can be very boring choice along some periods.
It’s evident that without a decent antenna for a band,the competitivity is anyway so poor that an all band entry is probably preferable although not competitive in anything.
73, Mauri I4JMY