[CQ-Contest] No more JAs

[Frank Hunt]

Here are some interesting statistics taken from the JARL All-Asian
Contest web site - numbers of participants (CW and Phone logs
received) for the past few years:

Year		JA		EU		NA
1996		457		270		34
1997		575		341		52
1998		647		385		62
1999		680		452		49
2000		859		431		63
2001		695		513		88
2002		733		469		98
2003		812		482		85
2004		696		533		79
2005		624		518		70
2006		727		521		57

Make of these figures what you like. Yes, I realise these are only
logs received and not numbers of all stations active, but I believe 
it
shows that the more serious JA contesters are still active, at least
in contests where they "hold center stage". Maybe in the other
contests where they don't hold center stage, such as the CQ type
contests, some of these more JA serious contesters and many casual JA
contesters really did get bored with being "cannon fodder".

I reckon the JA's would really appreciate it, if a lot more non-Asian
stations especially from NA, participated in the next AA contest and
took a turn at being the cannon fodder :-)

73, Frank ZL2BR

> 
> One hypothesis put forth is that the JAs got bored with being
> "cannon fodder" for the West Coast big guns.  Another theory is that
> as crowding the big JA cities got worse, fewer JAs could put up
> antennas for HF.  Perhaps the lure of cell phones and computers
> pulled the JA techno-hobbyist away from ham radio.  Take your pick.
> 
> I doubt there is any easy fix for this, unless we can make HF ham
> radio attractive to these people again.
> 
> For many years, we all waited for a huge explosion of BY hams as
> China became a more open society.  That hasn't worked to any great
> extent either...
> 
> 
> 73,
> 
> Dave/K8CC
>