[CQ-Contest] 2002 A GROWTH YEAR FOR ARRL CONTESTS

[Jim Reisert AD1C]

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The ARRL Letter
Vol. 22, No. 03
January 17, 2003
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==>2002 A GROWTH YEAR FOR ARRL CONTESTS

The year 2002 was a banner year for ARRL's Contesting Branch. Manager Dan
Henderson, N1ND, reports a record number of total entries for
ARRL-sponsored operating events.

"The total of 18,817 beats 2001's 18,505, a nearly 1.7 percent increase!"
Henderson said. Despite the downward slope of Cycle 23, the 2002 ARRL
10-Meter Contest saw a more than 18 percent jump in log submissions over
the previous year, he added, even as logs continued to arrive.

"Activity is up across the board for almost all contests, and I think we
would have seen more than 19,000 logs returned," Henderson said, "but the
World Radiosport Team Championships (WRTC 2002) in Finland last July
affected numbers for the IARU HF World Championships, as several hundred
of the world's top contest operators were there." Henderson notes that
since WRTC 2002 used slightly different rules, the logs from those
operators could not be entered in the IARU event, which ARRL administers.

The 2002 ARRL 10-Meter Contest, proved to be record-setter in several
ways. According to Henderson, not only was the December 14-15, 2002,
operating event the most active 10-meter contest on record, it had the
single highest number of participants returning logs of any single contest
in League history. As of January 16, the Contest Branch had logged 3051
entries and was still counting. "That's the very first time a
single-weekend ARRL contest has topped the 3000 mark in entries,"
Henderson said.

Other ARRL operating events that also saw increased numbers of logs over
2001 were Straight Key Night, up 22 percent; the ARRL 160-Meter Contest--a
CW event--up 19 percent; the ARRL 10 GHz and Up Contest, up 11 percent;
and ARRL Field Day, up by one-half of one percent. For the first time
ever, the 160-meter event topped 900 entries.

ARRL November Sweepstakes entries jumped between two and three percent for
the CW and SSB weekends in 2002, Henderson said. Entries received for the
ARRL international DX Contest remained approximately level for each mode
last year as did submissions for the ARRL's four major VHF-UHF-SHF events
in 2002.

Henderson said the move to require Cabrillo-format electronic logs has
proved a major boon to the Contest Branch. The elimination of most manual
log entry has moved up the posting of contest results by about a month, he
said. He said he expected the Contest Branch would be fine tuning
electronic log-processing during 2003.

Rules for all ARRL-sponsored operating events are available on the ARRL
Web site <http://www.arrl.org/contests/calendar.html>.



=====
Jim Reisert AD1C, 7 Charlemont Court, North Chelmsford, MA 01863
USA +978-251-9933, <jjreisert at alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.com
PGP Fingerprint: D8E2 3D78 339F A7F1 8C13  1193 B5D1 4FB6 79D1 70DC