[CQ-Contest] Bad Sprint Ideas

[George Fremin III]

Sprinters,

Even though I have never done very well in the CW sprint I think is is
a great contest worthy of promotion.

While I am not opposed to adding an additional sprint as it is hard to
get good at them since they only happen twice a year but there are
issues with finding dates etc.

I like the idea of adding the third CW sprint as a SprINT contest.  If
you don't know what a SprINT is look at these results:

http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/CQ-Contest/2001-07/msg00094.html


Anyway - that is not really what I wanted to talk about.

I wanted to talk about the current two sprints on the calendar.
Activity in this contest has been growing over the years and in the
last 3 or 4 years we have seen some great activity increases in this
contest. But I think we should all work to increase the activity in
the current sprints.

Log submissions have been a bit above 200 for the last two CW sprints
and this is great but if you look at the results you will see a lot of
room for improvement.

Bill Fisher has had great success getting a lot of W4 stations on in
the sprint, he does this by getting folks to sign up to be on a sprint
team. Many other people also do this as well for each sprint but since
it happens behind the scenes it is not always obvious. (I would like
to thank you all for doing this - but I am not sure who you are.)

But if you look at the results of the sprint you will notice that
there are some call areas that are under represented.

I will not reproduce numbers for each call area here but please go
look at the results.

http://www.ncjweb.com/contests.php

When you look at the results for your call area or state think of ways
that you and/or your contest club can get more people on for the next
sprint and then make it happen - get folks on the radio.  I think that
getting them on a sprint team is the best way to get them to get on
the radio.  Also I think it is clear that people on teams will put in
more time in the contest than if they are not on a team.  Get them on
a team.

In the September running of the contest there were only six logs from
W3 land.  The third call area has been putting in small numbers of
logs for the sprint in the last few years despite the fact that there
are at least two large contest clubs in the 3rd call area.  So I tried
to form a team of W3 stations this February - I had some success.

In the September contest I had good success forming a few teams from
the 5th call area. I found team members by looking through the NAQP
and SS results for people that sent in logs and I sent them emails
inviting them to be on a sprint. I also looked at the bottom of the
sprint results for the lower scoring stations and asked them to join
teams as well.  I also looked at my CW SS log and sent emails to
everyone I worked in the 5th (and this year the 3rd) call areas.  As a
result I got several sprint novices each time that I think will keep
coming back.

It is my hope the above will give you some ideas on how to find and
get new sprinters on the air - go after the long time contesters and
also get people that have never done a sprint.

I have an invitation email I send out - it has quite links to sprint
resources on it since I often send email to people that have never
heard of the sprint.

Here are those links:

If you have never tried the sprint you can find more 
information about it at these URLs:

CW Sprinting - Beginners Guide - by W4AN
http://www.contesting.com/articles/198

The Sprint Survival Web Page
"The Sprint - the most fun you can have in 4 hours with your clothes on." - N6TR
http://n6tr.jzap.com/sprint.html

If you would like to have some sprint QSOs to use for CW practice:
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr/audio/sprint_practice/

The rules are here:
http://www.ncjweb.com/sprintrules.php

Past scores are here:
http://www.ncjweb.com/sprintresults.php


Please go look at the sprint results and think about
ways you can get long time contesters and newbies on 
in the next sprint.

-- 
George Fremin III - K5TR
geoiii at kkn.net
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr