[CQ-Contest] DID WE BUY SOME TIME?

[Jim White, K4OJ]

A ham in another division forwarded this from one of his his representatives
on the BOD...AS hoped for it appears we have dodged the initial bullet, now
is time to switch into a different gear...AS A COMMUNITY CAN CONTESTERS
CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING TO THE ARRL OTHER THAN THEIR DUES, WHAT SHOULD WE DO TO
HELP OUR NATIONAL ORGANIZATION?  In the past few weeks I have been rather
aggressive in my comments re: ARRL...but, it is my countries organization
and I do not seek to replace it - only refine it - yes it must speak for all
of its members but I honestly feel we as contesters should have a loud voice
in what is in our magazine (and what about the overseas hams who are unable
to be members but do subscribe to QST to see the contest reporting because
they value ARRL's contests as ones which are actually officiated????)

How do we keep line scores in QST for those newcomers leafing through the
official journal of our hobby, say in a library, who see the reporting and
think to themselves this is kinda like a high scorers table on the internet
for a video game - or - this sounds kinda like sports
statistics....interesting????

The hook has to be baited for new contesters to get hooked...printed
coverage of contesting is the bait for new contesters.

If we want new contesters to insure that contesting is not only viable but
can grow in interest we had better get our collective sh*& together and
figure out if we wanna just look back at the good old days or decide the
good old days have yet to come and damnit we wanna be part of them.

HOW CAN WE HOOK NEW GUYS WHO WANT TO SEE CONTEST COVERAGE IN QST.

And, how do we let the ARRL BOD know we count?




...is it necessary for us to lobby the major QST advertisers we support to
join our crusade?  I dunno about you but my shack has several HF
transceivers in it plus accessories and amps and it is a lot of money in
that room - not to mention the towers, rotors and yagis!  I suspect shack
photos and antenna farm photos of my QTH would be good advertisements for
spending amongst our sub community!

I DO NOT HAVE AN ANSWER BUT I KNOW THAT IF THERE IS ANY SUB COMMUNITY WITHIN
THIS HOBBY THAT CAN BE FOCUSED AND DETERMINED IT IS CONTESTERS...and we ARE
an asset to our hobby despite what you hear from the pig farmers!  If there
was truly a major emergency like the Alaskan earthquake was many years ago
it would be Ham Radio that once again would be at the frontline of initial
communications and I cannot imagine who better to man those rigs than guys
who compete amongst themselves to copy the weakest signals.

The ARRL has some very good operators on board, and there are many Directors
and Vice Directors who have very respectable contest backgrounds...we are
not speaking to a totally deaf audience - but damnit we gotta give them more
to work with than this type of e-mail - flames alone will not slow the
degradation of coverage of OPERATING ACTIVITIES in QST.

Operating IS.


as QSP de a ham I chose to remain anonymous, from a rep at the BOD....

 >
 > Via another branch of the grapevine:
 >

 > >Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2002 12:11 PM
 > >Subject: Re: ARRL Contest Results NOT in QST is a BIG mistake
 > >
 > >The board has voted to hold off and work out a solution with contesters.
 > >Be sure to write to your director and get your contest group to do the 
same.
 > >I am at the board meeting at this time. So...give us a chance to work this
 > >out .


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