[CQ-Contest] Where are the W/VE's

[James Neiger]

Ron:

I fear that the very sad reality is, with the "graying" of the main-corps of
contesters in the USA, we will all see a steady decay in activity,
ultimately to the point that there's very little left.

Generally speaking, only within the confines of the European continent there
still exists any growth in the younger ranks of contesting, and still a
solid core of mainstream contesters.  Most everyone is learning today that
to prevail in world-wide contests you MUST have advantageous propagation
into Europe.  And, needless to say, if the contest doesn't involve Europe,
like All Asia or FD or ARRL DX, the dearth of activity will surely show.

I wish it wasn't so, but...........


Jim Neiger   N6TJ

-----Original Message-----
From: cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com]On Behalf Of KH6DV at cs.com
Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2004 3:08 PM
To: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Where are the W/VE's


We all wonder where the JA's are during contests, we all have been asking
this question for some time.  From the mid 70's to the mid 80's you could
run
JA's from the West coast for as long as you could hold up.  There has been a
decline in JA contest interest, no doubt about it. The decline in W/VE
contest
activity seems to be on a par with JA activity decline from my perspective.
I
work half as many JA's for a given effort now, I also work half as many
W/VE's
for a given effort. The following is typical:

ARRL DX SSB 80M Low Power
Year    Hrs.    Q's   Mults  Rate
1992    7.5     852   61      113.6  Steady activity
1995    7.5     661   57        88.1  Slow at times
2003    8.0     404   53        50.5  Darn boring

WPX in 1992 and 2003 had similar results from W/VE,  JA results in these two
WPX tests were down 27%.   Same location and the same antennas.

None of this proves much other than the fact that were not having as much
fun
as we once did.  I suspect there isnt one answer nor one solution. I cant
explain why I hear an amazing wall of JA's every time there is an
expedition, and
why many of the same stations aren't active during contests. Without input
from the JA perspective were just guessing.

Ron KH6DV

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