[CQ-Contest] Attracting new contesters

[Pete Smith]

At 09:06 PM 10/4/00 -0500, Barry Merrill wrote:
>
>I think anything that attracts non-contesters
>to participate  in contests are in our best   
>interest, including web-cams, but I think
>there is a better, and far easier way to
>increase contest activity:
>
>Take five minutes several days a week,
>when conditions are good to somewhere,
>and answer every CQing station you hear.

I totally endorse this, but I'd even broaden it.  WORK people, PERIOD.
I've been a ham 46 years, and remember when the bands used to be full of
stations CQing.  Now, you can hunt for a long time before you find one.
Contesters, tending to have big signals, can scare up very nice pileups of
the indoor dipole folks, simply by CQing when a band's open instead of
tuning for rare ones.  I've thrilled a lot of S0-minus Europeans with a
rare DX qSO, and it's kind of a good feeling to hear the excitement come
through.

One other point -- QSL!  My next batch of QSLs will make a clearer point of
my contester identity, and I'll continue to QSL every unique QSO on any
given band/mode combination.  I hope that in this way people hearing me in
the next test will remember, "Gee, he QSLed, and I didn't even send him one
first. I'll give him a QSO in the contest."

73, Pete Smith N4ZR

Contesting is ... Extreme Radio

The World Contest Station Database 
is back up and running at
http://www.qsl.net/n4zr 



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