[CQ-Contest] Contest Cookbook

[Dave Pruett]

With regards to the 1976 "Contest Cookbook", a couple of questions:

1) Does anybody remember who wrote the book?  C'mon - stretch those brain 
cells!  No fair peeking at that tattered, old copy on the hamshack shelf...

Answer: Bill Zachary, N6OP.  I don't remember hearing Bill's call in quite 
a while, but QRZ.com shows him still licensed.

2) Does anybody remember the process by which Bill "compiled" the 
book?  Clue: notice that I said "compiled" the book.

Answer: Bill sought the information for his book through surveys mailed to 
the "big guns" of the day.  In 1976 I was still a "little gun" in the 
contest world and did not rank receiving a survey.  However, my good friend 
Stan Stocking (now K5GO, but back then WA5RTG and SS big gun) did.

The years have erased my memory of the questions on that survey.  However, 
I think it is significant that Bill Zachary looked to others, as experts in 
their field, for the content of his book.  In that day, Bill was a very 
active contester and yet he did not fill the pages of his book with his own 
knowledge.  Yet, his experience as a contester gave him the ability to be a 
skilled compiler of other's wisdom.  If you read the Contest Cookbook, you 
will see that none of the chapters are written by any one person - these 
are "compilations" of several viewpoints.

With today's technology of word processing, web publishing, etc., it is 
easier than ever to print a book or publish a web site.  For those us of 
OTs who were contesting in 1976 it is interesting to note the challenges 
author Zachary faced in getting his book to print.  There was no WWW, no 
desktop PCs, no e-mail, etc.

The point of this e-mail is to point out that any contest book will only be 
as good as the content within.  This content needs to come from a variety 
of sources, who have proven the veracity of what they say through the fire 
of contest results.

In todays climate, its all too easy to write, submit and contribute.  For a 
new contest book to be valuable, we need input from experts, edited by 
someone who truly knows what he or she is writing about.  N6OP did so in 1976.

73,

Dave/K8CC


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