[CQ-Contest] Young people / the thrill is gone.

[Ward Silver]

> I met some
> really smart and cool people.  I learned from some of the masters, and
> I made some new friends.
> (snip)
> The sense of accomplishment was a great reward, and the camaradrie
> of my fellow competitors was always a blast, in TN or Dayton.
> (snippity, snip, snip)
> I used to compete against myself, and maybe against the guy similarly
> equipped across town.  Maybe I need to quit worrying about the big
> stations and hired guns and might-makes-right and cheaters and un-
> sportsmanlike operators and all that crap, and just get back to competing
> with my ulitmate competition, K4RO.  I don't know what the answer is,
> but the thrill is gone, and I'd like to know where it went.  Perhaps
> if I can find it again, others (including young contesters) can as well.
>
> -Kirk  K4RO

These are topics not only for contesting, but for ham radio in general...and
not only ham radio, but almost all of the traditional "technical hobbies".
To wit, check out the (I think) July 2000 "Sky and Telescope" whose theme is
"Where are the Young Astronomers?"  Substitute the appropriate technical
jargon and the article translates disturbingly well to our hobby.

The thrill that we receive (and what keeps us coming back) has its roots in
getting the little joy-ride over the hump of doing something "hard".  It's
abstract, not like bungee-jumping.  For those of you into a little backyard
sky-scanning, you know what I mean when I speak of the rush of seeing
M-something-or-other with your own two peepers and realizing that you, not
the Hubble, collected and processed photons from deep space to make that
image of the Dirtbag Nebula in your visual cortex.  Whoa!  The same holds
true for making DX QSOs, running your first 100-hour, making your first
million-point score, and so on.

Then, the first of many plateaus is reached.

There are really two questions here.  The first is how do you find out about
the contesting joy-ride in the first place?  The second is how do you keep
finding new little joy-rides at higher and higher levels?  Both should spawn
threads that run for weeks.

In the first place, ask yourself why any red-blooded teenager would select
ham radio, and ham radio contesting as "something to do"?  Obviously, once
they get a good look, it's pretty cool, but how do they get the first look?
There are a lot of other opportunities for their "pretty cool" dollars and
hours.  Radio, per se, is just another entertainment service - there is no
magic in it whatsoever.  Sound comes out of boxes via the internet or via
the airwaves - it's totally reliable and unsurprising.  So what?  What is
there about entry-level radio that is novel to a young person accustomed to
logging on to any web site in the world at any time of the day or night?  To
understand the "hardness" factor and get the joy-ride, you have to know
about the ionosphere, a little about the sun, and have some interest in
electronics.  This combination is rare and getting rarer.

I maintain that there is an alternate path to the traditional "Tom Swift and
His Wonder Rig" entry process.  It's high time that we started hybridizing
contesting to take advantage of high-bandwidth world-wide networking.  What
about distributed teams linked by networks?  What about real-time scoring
and reporting?  What about more use of remote stations - perhaps one
operator using a handful of stations world-wide during a single contest?
Doing this sort of thing meets the "hard" criteria, opens up a whole new set
of entry points for the technically savvy, and makes available an entirely
new set of competitive situations.

On to the second question.  In my personal circumstances, I have a pretty
capable station for its milieu - single-op, two-radio, LP and QRP
contesting.  I have acheived a certain amount of success, but I also realize
that I am unlikely to reach very many #1 spots with this particular station
in this particular location.  To make a meaningful upgrade will take Big
Bux.  I've decided that it is more exciting for me to participate on teams
and spend the dollars travelling to operate from other locations - that will
give me the next level of joy-rides.  The point being that one is allowed
(and should be encouraged) to make a 90-degree change and head off in some
other direction than the traditional build-bigger-higher direction.  If I'm
bored doing SOLP/QRP from Washington state and getting clobbered by
geography, then I'm allowed to change my geography - and maybe get a tan in
the process.

An equivalent element in holding my interest is the personal angle - several
respondents mentioned relationships with other contesters.  It's really
important to me to have a real "peer group" with which to talk contesting or
DXing or whatever.  It's not a solitary activity.  The pressures of having a
career and a family and other activities besides ham radio (you're kidding,
right?) make it easy to lose that sense of community.  And suddenly it's not
as much fun anymore.  You can look up in the sky at all that metal and at
the gleaming front panels of the radios and it just doesn't mean very much
without someone to share it with.  Our local club has a devil of a time
keeping attendance up due to traffic, aging, packet, the internet, whatever.
As attendance has dropped, so has on-air time.  The old post hoc, ergo
prompter hoc fallacy?  Perhaps, but I feel like we are making poor
substitutions for face-time with others, losing the human interest angle in
the process.

Look at European contesting - participation is exploding.  How can this be?
Land ownership is nearly impossible for most young people.  Everyone lives
in apartments or tiny (by 80-meter dipole standards) houses.  I'll tell you
how they do it - clubs!  Five, ten, or twenty contesters get together and
put up a station on a hilltop or in a high building somewhere and work their
butts off to make it play like a bomb.  Most of them may never have their
own station as we in the US are accustomed to having, but they are on the
air, making lots of QSOs and having a ball - with their friends.  I think
it's a model we need to be paying more attention to.

I'm indebted to K7SS for a bit of contesting wisdom that translates well to
other arenas - "If something isn't working - do something else" - and to my
brother who said to me, "If you don't want to do something, don't do it!"
Duh.

I guess the trick is to tell the difference between being in a groove and in
a rut.

73, Ward N0AX


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