Dxpeditions for Contests

[N3ADL at aol.com]

I echo Ed's thread...The vast majority of our team has a hard time financing
one trip to V2 let alone 4..or even TWO ( I wish)..Contest Dxpeditioning is a
year round effort and is done by guys who refuse to do less than whats
humanly possible to make points for the club. We JUST DO IT! I find the new
rules a great chance to further inter club competition and frankly I'm
EXCITED! We'll see you from V26B ARRL Phone 97 come hell or high water. There
might even be a 1 year spot open at CQ96 Phone for a top notch 40 meter op
while KA2AEV ties the knot.
                                         73 es DX
                                                   de Doug // V26DX
P.S. Congrats to PJ1B ! Awesome string of records, dudes!

>From k5na at bga.com (Richard L. King)  Tue Mar 19 15:36:32 1996
From: k5na at bga.com (Richard L. King) (Richard L. King)
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 09:36:32 -0600
Subject: CAC recommends DXpeditions count for club scores
Message-ID: <199603191536.JAA18228 at zoom.bga.com>

>Ahem.

Ahem, Ahem back!

>A note of reality here gentleman.  Does it ever occur to anyone that
>permitting DXpeditions to count towards club scores (as the CQ WW has
>done for as long as I can remember) will generate more expeditions and
>thus make the contest more enjoyable for everyone?

I don't think you read my original post very carefully. I agree that
generating more DXpedtions will result and that working them (or being them)
will be more fun for all us old-timer contesters (like you and me). And I
think we all agree that the change is fine for the unlimited and medium club
categorys. It wont  necessarily discourage any activity there.
 
However, it has been my direct experience that the local club category, as
it is, brings in new contesting blood due to the 'teamwork' attitude that
results from the closeness of a small club. It is this togetherness, AND the
discovery that they may be competitive, that encourages these small clubs to
get their members on the air to contribute to the club score. In a sense, it
is team-contesting at its best.
Remember that these are clubs that you may have never heard the name of
before. It is these 'non-professional-contesting' clubs that will suffer
loss of competitiveness..
 
I have seen many amateurs, that didn't have any interest in contesting, get
on just to be a part of their local club's effort. They end up making a
couple hundred contacts and the next year they are hooked on contesting.
DXpeditions will tilt the competitive level of a 'normal' local club's
score. How many first-time contesters go on DXpeditions?  Not very many, I
bet. With the DXpedition rule many local clubs will lose interest causing
many new contesters to be lost.

>Just to let people know that there isn't a conspiracy of elites behind
>everything ...
>
>   -- Pat
>      WA8YVR

I don't recall anyone pointing fingers or claiming a "conspiracy of elites".
Those are your words. I just think the CAC probably gets most, or all, of
its input from the larger, more vocal, contest clubs. I bet they (the
committee) rarely hear from the smaller clubs. I don't know who voted for
what on the committee, so I can't say whether or not some of the members had
carefully thought out the full range of implications from the new rule. Too
bad there wasn't discussion on the DXpedition issues here BEFORE they took
their vote.

The contest committee is made up of people, just like you and me. They do
the best they can with the information available but sometimes they may make
a bad call. In this case I see it as a partial bad call because of the
effect the rule will have on the local clubs. If you disagree with the
outlook your representative has on contesting and you feel he (or she) is
not representing your views, then there are ways to nominate a replacement.
I knew what those procedures were 20 years ago, but I am not sure of the
procedure now. I think the candidate must be an ARRL member and the
nomination requires the signature of three ARRL members.

73, Richard
K5NA at BGA.COM