Ridiculous ?
May be, but basically not so impossible or strange since the
actual "cure" to keep playing a population suffering a lack in turn
over seems to be that to tailor everything to the individual needs and
energy.(phisical, economical etc.)
Results are questionable, if it's true that submitted logs of some
contests are increasing, it's also true that contests logs are more and
more composed by calls of people who's a specific entrant of that
competition. Occasional pile up replyers are instead disappearing more
and more, year after year.
>From Europe I miss the big and long lasting pile ups from USA
(expecially the west coast), or the morning "wall" of JAs on 15 and 10
meters. All this happens in spite the actual setups and tecniques
largely outperforms those we had 15 or 25 years ago and it's the
evident result of an amateur radio crisis that reduced activity in
general.
The world top list of SO or MM results is yes impressive, but such
numbers are produced by the very best operators "moved" in the very
strategical places (possibly midway from USA and Eu, a bit closer to Eu
is now better).
Europe or NA weren't ever the place to win a world wide contest, but
now we suffer much more than it was before to produce results and have
probably a bit less fun from operating inside those areas.
Again, if the crisis of amateur radio as a generic hobby for
communications is already irreversible (no appeal in the era of
internet and wab cell phones) contesting could continue to be
interesting for experienced people and newcomers until features are
those of a technological sport with a great space for the operators
whose skillness is good and mind open in adopting new "tools" and
techniques.
I've the feeling that refusing to compete in the same category and
creating lower and lower contesting levels goes in the wrong direction
to enhance contesting appeal, at least in a long term perspective.
To summarize, the introduction of new categories is at great risk t
be
like a symptomatic medicine that hides the symptom of a serious illness
and prevents a possible good cure to be prescribed until it's too late.
73,
Mauri I4JMY
> ---------- Initial message -----------
>
> From : owner-cq-contest@contesting.com
> To : CQ-Contest@contesting.com
> Cc :
> Date : Thu, 01 Jun 2000 23:34:35 -0400
> Subject : Re: [CQ-Contest] SO2R a new category?
>
>
> I fail to see how SO2R is any different from any other station
hardware or
> technology improvement. Should we have a "no beverage antenna"
> category? How about a "no automatic band or antenna switching"
> category. Perhaps a category for stations not using a computer?
This is
> ridiculous...
categories to correspond with your decision.
>
> 73,
>
> Dave/K8CC
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