I love it when contest organizers help recognize the part-time participants
with certificates etc. In particular if a certificate comes in the mail in
the week or two before the next running of the contest, wow that helps
remind me how much fun it was the last year, and to be sure to participate
again. Anything to motivate folks to turn in a log is wonderful. Of course
this being 2013 we have E-mail for most participants and that's a fine
channel (alhtough I still really like the paper certificates in my
real-world mailbox!)
But I think we have to be careful that we don't start limiting hours or
wandering back towards a quota system that not only limits participation
but also reduces the variety of operating strategies (thinking of the way
ARRL DX used to work out with 6-per quotas.)
Categories that encourage activating less common modes/bands (e.g. 160M
single-band category) are a very very good thing. These make sure that
there's always something to be worked even on the not-most-popular bands.
I do not feel the current 36 max hours for SO in CQ WPX limits me. And I
think at least once I accidentally ran over the 10 hours for SO in NAQP and
I don't feel too bad about that. But trim hours back much further or start
requiring contiguous operation... and I would feel that they were limiting
participation rather than enabling recognition.
Tim N3QE
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