[CQ-Contest] QST Contest Results

[Ron Notarius WN3VAW]

I should have added in my earlier reply that while I would like to see
contest results back in QST, I would be willing to settle for another
in-print venue... and the NCJ seems tailor-made for that purpose, especially
now that it's an ARRL publication.

I miss not having the results handy.  Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I want to
pull out the appropriate issue of one rag or another and thumb thru the
results, not find a computer, login, get online, and try and do a lookup
(and maybe miss something because of the lookup limits).

Also, I made a suggestion to several at ARRL Hq at Hamvention a few years
ago that the contest results for the previous year should be put on the
annual publications CD-ROM that they publish -- ie, the 2006 CD should
include not only QST, QEX, NCJ, and so forth, but also all of the 2006
contest results.  At least we'd have SOME off-line access to them that way!
I was told at the time that it was a "good" idea by one staffer, a "great!"
one by another, and both promised that there'd be a follow up and I'd hear
something... and sad to say, that was the last I ever heard about it...

73, ron wn3vaw

-----Original Message-----
Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 16:40:03 -0400
From: Michael Keane K1MK <k1mk at alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] QST Contest Results
To: W2RU - Bud Hippisley <W2RU at frontiernet.net>
Cc: Jim Reisert AD1C <jjreisert at alum.mit.edu>,
	cq-contest at contesting.com

All of this is very reminiscent of the discussions of this topic four
years ago. Yes indeed, What A Long Strange Trip It's Been

At 03:33 AM 5/19/06, N7MAL wrote:
>What are the numbers Jim? The ARRL claims, on their website, 152,000
>members. How many members on this list? How many members at contesting.com
?

Don't know about CQ-Contest or contesting.com. However, the ARRL
Contester's Rate Sheet had over 14,000 e-mail subscribers in March
according to N0AX. On the other hand, NCJ has a paid circulation of a
bit more than 2500 according to the most recent publishers statement.

I think that says something about the number of contesters and their
willingness to spend money.

At 08:04 AM 5/19/06, Dale Putnam wrote:
>This is very disturbiing, not only do they not publish what we
>want... they have mislaid the idea that the customer comes first...

For whatever reasons, contest results are a polarizing subject:
people seem to either love them or hate them. And when the
"customers" are surveyed about what they'd like to see being
published, contest results always drew big negatives and low
positives. (The latest of the QST reader surveys was summarized in
Jun '04 QST and is included in
<http://www.arrl.org/ads/ad-matters/Ad-Matters-Oct-2004.pdf>).

It's hard to reconcile "The Customer Is Always Right" with the
preferences expressed by the membership in objective surveys.



Bud,
Keep letting your division director know how you feel about this. It
took a vote of the ARRL board of directors to relocate contest line
scores from QST to the Web. The only way line scores would ever be
brought requires similar action by the ARRL BoD; the staff in
Newington can't do it on their own initiative.

73,
Mike K1MK

Michael Keane K1MK
k1mk at alum.mit.edu