have we contested too long?

[Alan Brubaker]

Derek...

I doubt that you will get anyone on this board to admit that he or she
runs significantly more than 1500 watts output. I believe that the majority
of serious contest competitors play by the rules (at least here in the U.S.)
and boost their signals with bigger and better antenna arrays and/or better
locations if they have the means and opportunity to do so. There have been 
rumors that a few stations do push the limit a bit, but most of them seem to 
be in other countries and not here in the U.S. How many of you really believe 
that I5NPH used to run 300 watts, for example? How about some of those "200 
watt" Russian stations? Right.

As Peter pointed out, and as I attempted to point out two weeks ago, the 
Sunday afternoon slump gets old after awhile, particularly if you are running 
a multi-multi or are running single band (like I did) and are not getting 
replies to your many CQs and there are no stations on the band that you have 
not yet worked. It is at times like these that you really begin to wonder if 
the dreaded 24 hour DX contest doesn't make some sense after all. I have not 
researched it, but I think that this is one of the reasons that the ARRL DX 
contest was shortened to one weekend (48 hours from 96) in the first place. 
I do have strong feelings about leaving the CQWW contests alone - there always 
seems to be more activity in those because of the "everyone works everyone" 
format, where, of course the ARRL DX 'test is "everyone works the U.S./Canada".
I have heard many DX contest operators complain that the ARRL 'test is just
plain boring after awhile. Maybe yet another reason for a 24 hour event. There
are other good reasons for paring the ARRL 'test down to 24 hours, some of
which may be beneficial to non-participants. Personally, I do not care one way
or the other, and I am not pushing that hard for a 24 hour contest. I tend to
not get very serious about these things any more, and from out here in the West, 
it is nigh improbably that you will make the top ten nationally in any category 
unless you have a very _$eriou$_ antenna $y$tem (TM) (ala W0UN/AA6TT, etc.) - 
certainly well out of reach of mere mortals like myself and most of us, for that 
matter. Just another 2% worth...

Alan, K6XO