[CQ-Contest] Recruiting Women into Contesting

[Merrimon Crawford Pladsen <ab0mv@ix.netcom.com>]

A few more thoughts:

Unfortunately the YLRL often has its contests during the middle of the 
week.  Many women do work nowadays although for some reason, many women's 
groups often schedule during the week.

Marta KC0FXI had an interesting idea at our local ham club when talking 
about things we might do as a club.  She suggested a contest on the theme 
of a treasure or scavenger hunt.

I loved her idea!  I am sure it is heretical to say this, but sometimes it 
would be nice to see something different than just seeing how many people 
you can work in a given time---it gets boring to do the same thing all the 
time.  It could be a lot of fun to have some different types of contests 
that test other skills and parts of the brain.  I know, the SET does test 
some other things but I am sure there are other ways to have more creative 
contests that might reach other hams who usually don't contest.  There 
might be ways to incorporate many aspects, including internet and radio 
(having a radio contact send an image or other thing on the hunt).  There 
are many people YLs and non-YLs who are quite competitive who may just not 
be interested in seeing how many QSO's they can rack up in a specified time.

Of course, something like that would take a lot of work to organize.....
But it does seem to me that there are many creative possibilities in "radio 
contesting" and I personally would enjoy the variety.  Also, it would be 
great to have something that requires more skill than having lots of money 
to buy huge antennas.....something that takes more than just running lots 
of power and/or huge towers (includes QRP).  I know that's heresy but 
working other parts of one's intelligence in contesting could bring some 
nice variety and even make the old kind more interesting because there is 
variety.

Probably a club would need to initiate it.....the larger hierarchy seems 
really slow in implementing different ideas.  Even with all the antenna 
covenants overtaking society, we still see no real progress in having a 
Multi-op low power category.  I can just imagine the resistance a different 
category of contesting as a whole!  But that was the idea of one YL and I 
thought it was quite brilliant.  If one really wants to recruit more YLs, 
it would be good to listen to YLs, contesters and non-contesters.

73
Merri AB0MV

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