Recently, after not hearing anything from the K1KI committee since March I
became worried and had begun the process of preparing to make a visual
statement at the ARRL this weekend. I was also looking for people to join
me. I have tried to make my self heard by everyone from the subscription
people all the up to the president of the ARRL. I did finally receive
confirmation from Ward Silver N0AX that he feels a the change process is
still in progress and that a second round will take place. From his letter I
took: The proposals have been significantly modified based on input from the
VHF contest community following the initial release of the committee's
proposal.
I also heard from Dave Sumner K1ZZ via Dave Patton NN1N. Although they did
not say much pro or con I take it that they did hear me.
I suspect the ARRL wants to make good changes. To do that they probably want
to hear from more people than just the people on this list. People on this
list tend to be pretty serious and are committed to the contest no matter
what the form. Each has their own preferences and concerns. How about each
person on the list try to get one casual VHF+ / VHF+ contester to make a
suggestion and send it to the sub committee? Please don't let this subject
die. Apathy is already doing damage to many ham activities. Let be
pro-active on this and give the ARRL suggestions.
The questions I put forth were only answered by 11 people. 1 was from the
ARRL and one other was a person who had several good comments but not
directly to these.
#1 Do you think the ARRL will indeed kill the VHF contest microwave bands
and rovers after September?
YES 3 + 1
No 3 +1 no
Maybe 2
I take it that not eveyone feels the ARRL has already made up its mind.
IF the ARRL decides to end VHF contesting as we know it after this
September; Would you consider being part of a new VHF contest that would
retain the ALL bands, Rovers and fun?
Yes 9
No 0
Everyone seems to be in favor of joining a different contest if the ARRL
does manage to reduce this one but ruling out some of the fun and bands.
Would you consider joining in an effort to show the ARRL you want to keep
amateur radio from eroding like this before they do it?
Yes 7
No 1
Maybe 1
A number of Great comments that I post here in the hopes that the ARRL will
see them.
#1 There are those that want to see VHF only contests like the CQ contest
and there are those that would support microwave only contests. More seem to
feel that the fact that the contest is multiband gets more participation. In
other words the Microwave people carry VHF gear and the VHF people carry
microwave gear during contest weekends which increases participation to both
segments of the ham population. If you split the two groups into separate
contests neither group will have the participation they had as a single
group. One person feels the ARRL is biased towards the Microwaves but the
proposals suggest removing microwaves from June and/or September and
dropping August altogether.
#2 This one surprised me, 3 people suggested that newcommers don't have a
place to compete. Not necessarily win, but at least compete. I never noticed
this but the rules only have one "Limited" class and that is for Multi-Multi
High power. If you want to increase participation AND have an award for
those with ICOM 706's (and the like) then you should create a "Limited
single op low power (<100w)" category. This seems too obvious but I never
noticed this idea before.
#3 The struggle to compete. Just about everyone participates without the
expectation to win. (I sure do). Yet they keep participating. Why? People
that send in logs do so for some reason. Why?
Well the reason to send in logs is now gone, you do not get to see you call
sign in QST. So why participate? You can't send in your logs and you can't
see your call in QST. 3 people added comments on this subject so I figure
its worth the mention. I also figure some of us do both in the somewhat vein
attempt to try to keep the contest going.
I want to thank those that sent me replies and especially those that had
more to say.
Tim
Tim Ertl KE3HT/r
QSL via CBA
http://www.ke3ht.org/rover
ke3ht@ke3ht.org
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