[CQ-Contest] Recruiting Women into Contesting

[Grillo's]

Merri -

So, rate is really not a challenge!  Wow, what a concept....

Are you familiar with the European "fox hunting" idea?  This is hiding a
transmitter and everyone trying to find it with directional antennas hooked
up to portable receivers, while running in the woods getting bearings until
the fox is found.  Each successful chaser is timed from the time the hunt
begins at a local gathering place to the time all have found the fox, or
time is up.  Winner is the one who found the fox in the shortest time.
These are local affairs that are great fun for all.  It could be set up as a
club activity in densly populated amateur radio communities.  Alas, such is
not the case in Colorado.

Maybe some version of this could be done by allocating YL stations to switch
call signs and frequencies in the middle of a contest so you would have to
find them all over again.  This is not a new concept, but introducing it now
might induce a spark....

Have you passed on the Elmer contest info to anyone in the club yet?

73,
Pete
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Merrimon Crawford Pladsen" <ab0mv at ix.netcom.com>
To: <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2004 2:32 PM
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Recruiting Women into Contesting


A few more thoughts:

Unfortunately the YLRL often has its contests during the middle of the
week.  Many women do work nowadays although for some reason, many women's
groups often schedule during the week.

Marta KC0FXI had an interesting idea at our local ham club when talking
about things we might do as a club.  She suggested a contest on the theme
of a treasure or scavenger hunt.

I loved her idea!  I am sure it is heretical to say this, but sometimes it
would be nice to see something different than just seeing how many people
you can work in a given time---it gets boring to do the same thing all the
time.  It could be a lot of fun to have some different types of contests
that test other skills and parts of the brain.  I know, the SET does test
some other things but I am sure there are other ways to have more creative
contests that might reach other hams who usually don't contest.  There
might be ways to incorporate many aspects, including internet and radio
(having a radio contact send an image or other thing on the hunt).  There
are many people YLs and non-YLs who are quite competitive who may just not
be interested in seeing how many QSO's they can rack up in a specified time.

Of course, something like that would take a lot of work to organize.....
But it does seem to me that there are many creative possibilities in "radio
contesting" and I personally would enjoy the variety.  Also, it would be
great to have something that requires more skill than having lots of money
to buy huge antennas.....something that takes more than just running lots
of power and/or huge towers (includes QRP).  I know that's heresy but
working other parts of one's intelligence in contesting could bring some
nice variety and even make the old kind more interesting because there is
variety.

Probably a club would need to initiate it.....the larger hierarchy seems
really slow in implementing different ideas.  Even with all the antenna
covenants overtaking society, we still see no real progress in having a
Multi-op low power category.  I can just imagine the resistance a different
category of contesting as a whole!  But that was the idea of one YL and I
thought it was quite brilliant.  If one really wants to recruit more YLs,
it would be good to listen to YLs, contesters and non-contesters.

73
Merri AB0MV



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