Part III ? Addendum to Rover comments. I appreciate
all of the thought provoking comments regarding the
rovers. The response to my one paragraph comment on
the rovers is getting to be a very interesting thread
on the reflectors, to say the least. But, for the
record, I love the rovers, I have been a rover a
couple of times myself. I am not thrilled with any
major changes to most of the rules, rovers included.
As I stated earlier, I feel that any rules tinkering
will not automatically increase log submissions.
Personally, I would rather leave the bulk of the rules
alone, including rovers. It is just that many folks
have continued to complain about the unique ability of
the rovers to really zing out the points, so I wanted
to at least raise the issue. But I do not even know if
rover point production is such a bad thing, so long as
rovers stimulate contest activity. And judging from
your comments, the rovers certainly do stimulate
things and make for a livelier contest. With that, I
want to return to my main theme.
Part IV ? Club Oriented Suggestions. The core of my
thoughts revolve around the development of new VHF
clubs.
If demographics and major technological changes have
been the major impetus for the dramatic ups and downs
in VHF contest log submissions over very long time
frames, as I and others believe, then the current
discussions regarding rules changes may primarily only
lead to alterations in existing rules that are
perceived to be inequitable in some manner. That will
not necessarily generate more log submissions, but
only serve to cure those perceived inequities to the
current rules structure (and possibly create new
perceived inequities in the process!).
I suggest that absent another round of amendments to
the regulatory environment or absent another massive
technology change enabling more hams to use VHF, any
rules changes by themselves (and no matter how well
intended), may fall short of the stated goal of log
entry increases. There may only be marginal impacts
at best, and some of those impacts may be negative in
nature. The root cause of the great variance in log
entries is still not being addressed ? that of
regulatory changes and corresponding technological
innovations. VHF rules changes, merely induced for
the sake of creating greater log entries, may amount
to little or nothing.
Without another great regulatory change that would
have the effect of unleashing hoards of new hams onto
the VHF bands, what then can be done? I suggest that
the answer has been with us all the time: renewed
emphasis on VHF oriented clubs and the corresponding
VHF activity that these clubs generate. The VHF
community has to itself create the hordes of fresh
blood for further VHF activity to occur. The best way
in which to do that is by pushing the club format.
Anyone anywhere nearby an active VHF club will hear
almost constant chatter on the calling frequencies.
Anyone in a location without an active club will only
hear ?hiss? 99% of the time. An almost infamous
example of this effect occurs almost every day is my
own neck of the woods. In St. Louis, close to 1.5
million people live in the urban SMSA. There is no VHF
oriented radio club, only several county level and FM
repeater clubs. We have lots of hams running about,
but there may be only 50 or so hams that regularly use
the 2 meter and above VHF bands. Many more hams will
pop into the 6 meter band during the summer with their
newer HF + 6 rigs, but these hams are more causal in
nature, taking advantage of the E skip season.
Imagine only 50 (maybe) amateurs being active on VHF
out of a population of 1.5 million! The numbers of
active VHF hams could be many times more than that if
a VHF club would exist to generate the critical mass
necessary to keep people interested in VHF activity.
At least, a mid Missouri SWOT net has been running for
a time on Monday nights at 144.250 MHZ. That?s
something, I suppose.
But like anything else, it would take the ongoing and
persistent efforts of a few key people with time on
their hands to organize and maintain such a VHF club.
Any takers out there for St. Louis? (I am rather busy
right now on several business related matters, or else
I might attempt it). Any takers for the any other
SMSA?s around the country?
I will have more specific comments regarding the clubs
in my last few parts to follow. (I am breaking up my
thoughts into ?parts? so as to not overwhelm the
reflector on any one day. I am also trying to time my
remarks for days in which there is not a whole lot of
activity on the reflector otherwise. I apologize for
my comments becoming so fragmented into several small
?parts?).
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