There has been a great deal of commentary about results reporting and delays in
issuing certificates and plaques to the winners.
I don't see any particular comments from the other side of the fence since much
of
this is done by volunteers as has been noted.
My point in the following is not for looking for any credit but to provide some
insight
into the certificate process from my personal experience.
A few years ago, I decided to volunteer for doing certificates for a CQ contest
(not
the CQWW). The idea was to give something back rather than complain about how
long
it took to do it.
The contest director, who is quite diligent about his work, sent me a template
for Word to print out the certificates, blank certificates, inked stamps for
signatures and a
sample of how to determine what level of award to print from the results.
I was, in fact, reimbursed for materials which were primarily purchasing the
mailing envelopes
locally along with the blank sheets and for the postage to send the package to
CQ.
What I mean is that I took the results, in bold, and then determined what place
that person
had won along with their full name, mode, score and section or country and
printed it.
You also have to look up the addresses and I found that Buckmaster is setup so
you can't
copy an address without subscribing these days which I had to do. QRZ.com is
not as
current as Buckmaster sometimes which I found out the hard way.
And, there are some stations whose addresses is seemingly unavailable by any
normal means.
So, that has to be dealt with.
Of course, you have to address the envelope, fill out the certificate, stamp
it, put plain sheets
in front of and behind and seal the envelope.
It turned out that there were some 300 or so certificates for the SSB mode.
After all of this
is done, it has to be boxed up and shipped to CQ Magazine so they can apply the
postage and send
it out from there.
As it turned out, the person who volunteered to do the CW mode backed out and I
ended up
doing those also with nearly 350 certificates as I recall.
Needless to say, if you think about it a moment, it took many, many hours to do
these. And,
given my work schedule, it took a few months to get both modes completed.
Then a sort of strange thing happened. I got this terse e-mail from one of the
senior staff
members of CQ Magazine indicating that the way these envelopes were packaged
(and
done exactly as requested), they weighed 1.1 ounces and therefore had caused a
double postage
rate rather than if they were 1.0 ounce or under.
I guess it never occurred to me to check the weight of any of the envelopes.
I really don't want to sound like I'm making a big deal out of this. But, for
those of you that
are concerned, and I'm not saying that there isn't room for improvement, maybe
you should
consider being part of the solution. I think once you find out how much work is
involved,
you might be a little more understanding about this situation.
It is so easy to criticize and, while some of it is warranted, then volunteer
and help solve the
problem. It will make you feel good!
I also think there are a lot of people who do, and on a regular basis, a whole
lot more work
then this in log checking, verifying results year in and year out and other
assorted tasks
involved with running the contests. They are seldom thanked and seldom are
there any kind
words sent their way.
I'm sure there will be flame throwers out there but this is a little bit of the
other side.
I like the idea that people should be kind to each other as much as possible
and this,
after all, is only a hobby.
73, Jim, K1PX
K1PX@msn.com<mailto:K1PX@msn.com>
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