Something I would suggest considering:
Rather that place the SSB Sprint on a fixed calendar date (second Saturdays
of February and September), run it on weekends that by virtue of calendar
oddities do not have other major contests at the same time.
In 2014 this would have included such dates as Saturday evening May 31,
when the weekend was in two different months; and November 8 or 22, the
second or fourth weekend of a month that has five full weekends (with major
contests on the first, third and last weekends).
Some prime dates in 2015 would include January 31 (a month splitting
weekend) that has only the UBA SSB DX contest listed on WA7BNM; or in May,
August, or October, which have five full weekends this year.
The low activity in the last Sprint was for a lot more reasons than
competition with the WAE SSB, the ARRL VHF QSO Party, or the Arkansas QSO
Party.
But wiith careful date placement, you might get those people who
desperately need a contest fix, with few or no other options.
73 - Jim K8MR
In a message dated 9/16/2014 6:14:46 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
k9yc@audiosystemsgroup.com writes:
The Manager of the SSB Sprint is a member of our club. I saw him at the
NCCC meeting last week, when he talked for 45 minutes about CQP (of
which he is also the Chair), but said not a word about SSB Sprint. His
announcement on this reflector was a few hours before the start, far too
late to promote activity or organize teams. Not a single word moved on
the NCCC reflector about SSB Sprint until it was over. Perhaps SSB
Sprint needs someone with the fire in his ass to make things happen.
N5KO and I have been talking about some sort of campaign to build
activity in the CW Sprint. He's got databases from participants from
prior years that could be used for postcards or emails. I'm willing to
kick in some bucks to make it happen.
This time around, I started about 45 minutes late and quite about 50
minutes early when Qs were >5 minutes apart on 80M, my best band.
73, Jim K9YC
The On Mon,9/15/2014 2:16 PM, K4XS via CQ-Contest wrote:
> I agree that activity has hit an all time low.
>
> I've been doing Sprint since the 80s and unless you got over 300 Qs you
> lost and might not even make top 5.
>
> In the Sprint last Saturday I had a malfunction of my 40 meter antenna
> after only 5 or so Qs, leaving only 20 (which had pretty well petered
out) and
> 80 which was nil for activity. Having only made a miserable 90+ Qs in
> almost two hours I decided to throw in the towel. Boring!!!
>
> In the last few Sprints it has been pretty much begging to get Qs and
then
> the top guys only made around 240-250 Qs, many of them begging Qs.
>
> This used to be a great contest and it's said the contest has become a
> shell of its old self.
>
> Bill K4XS/KH7XS
>
>
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