[CQ-Contest] Meet with the BoD

[Ford Peterson]

Since I didn't tape record the meeting, I am paraphrasing the answers the
best I can.  Others at the meeting can and should correct me if my reporting
is somehow unfaithful to the tenor of Mr. Bellows presentation.  N0FP

N0FP asked

Is the Board's interest in making changes in content in any way driven by
negative reaction to contesting by other ARRL members?

Bellows:

Every aspect of Ham Radio receives complaints at the ARRL.  The proposal was
made by staff after looking at ways of trimming the budget.  The proposal
was to go into effect in the year 2003.  At no time was there a discussion
of "complaints" related to contesting.

N0FP asked

Many in the contesting community have speculated and accused the ARRL staff
and the BoD of "trying to slip these changes by" without the input of the
membership community.  Are the accusations justified?

Bellows: (remember this is what I heard folks--not an exact quote--N0FP)

The board had already called for a reduction in the page count of QST.
Staff was responding to that call--it's their job.  There was no plot to
"run this through."  Staff was presenting the results of their study.  The
changes, if adopted, wouldn't have taken effect until 2003.  It was
unfortunate that the information was released in this manner.

The BoD is very sensitive about giving the usable space in QST to every
aspect of Ham Radio in proportion to its users.  Inequities exist and will
continue to exist.

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During his presentation, Mr. Bellows described some of the rationale in the
decision making process related to QST.

187 pages/month with 60% in ads = 75 pages of content.

The QST will be trimmed to 176 pages with 60% ads = 70 pages of content.

Fully loaded cost of a QST is about $3,000 per page annually.

9% of the membership is considered "related" to contesting.

Depending on the issue, between 14% and 26% of the issue is contesting.
Apparently, 5000 individual calls are listed in a given QST.  1500 from
contesters and 1800 in section news.  An apparent disparity exists in the
mix of editorial space (75 pages) and the mix of amateur interest.  Puerto
Rico Section News as used as an example -- 71 members and in spanish --
recorded forever for all to see.  Why?

A study found that 89% of "contesters" had access to the web.

He explained that the meeting minutes will be immediately reproduced for
members without access to the web and mailed.  He further explained that a
similar feature should be made available to member participants in contests
without web access.

There was talk of an annual.  There was talk of moving to NCJ.  In all
respects there is the assumption that significant web based information will
be available--not just the PDF file of current articles as it is today.
John even mentioned the possiblity of clicking on a line score and getting
the guy's band stats, etc. Or even setting up your own filtering techniques
to analyze data more effectively in excel formats.

Field Day will continue to have QST content.

The discussion became heated at times when it came to Section News.  Several
MWA members are active in traffic and had strong opinions related to Section
news.  With what I know and understand about traffic, points, nets and
section scores, you better ask somebody else--I have no idea what all the
excitement was about.

Ford-N0FP
ford at cmgate.com


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