[CQ-Contest] 15 days is NOT enough time

[Robert Shohet]

Lots of pro's and con's on this "issue" sparked by Trey's ambitious and
thoughtful ideas.

Most of the pro's and con's have been covered except for
family issues and career issues.  These are issues that are not safe
to ignore.

Each year from about mid-January to the 3rd week in April,
I run a work marathon filled with issues of accounting, taxes, investments,
market trading, etc.  Anyone in the financial services, tax or legal areas
has to deal with this.  Some of us have more time and business
commitments than others.

In my case, it is almost impossible to make the time to operate in
both ARRLDX contests and CQWPX SSB.  Fixing antennas is out of
the question, as is even thinking about the CQ160, Sprint or
anything else.  Reviewing the log for typos (yes, I do this), and attempting
to write comments or contest notes stretches me almost to the breaking
point (as well as my family).

Now it is proposed that we have a 15 day deadline that for ARRLDX CW logs
will fall, depending on the calendar, either in the middle of ARRLDXSSB
weekend or shortly before it?  It's just too soon in the middle of too much
going
on.

Perhaps this will be ok for others, but not for me.  I also do not
understand how the difference between 15 and 30 days can be so pivotal and
crucial.

Let's first eliminate all the other sources of delays and deadlines before
we mess with this.  Until and unless Congress changes our tax system and the
end of year work required to deal with it, a 15 day deadline virtually
ensures that I will have to make a choice between operating and not
submitting a log
or not operating at all.

I can't believe that this type of a choice, forced on the participants,
could be beneficial to any contest.   For years we have waited many months
for the contest results.  If instead of 7 months it will now take only 4
months, that's a great improvement!  So why should it now be crucial to have
the results in 3.6 months instead of 4.0 moths?

I can wait, and I believe, so can a lot of the other participants.

73

 Bob KQ2M