[CQ-Contest] Early Contests?...

[Kenneth E. Harker]

On Sat, Jan 26, 2008 at 08:34:53PM -0000, Cooper, Stewart wrote:
> Can anyone help with some research? When was the first amateur radio contest? Does anyone have any details of early contests? Reply direct.

I researched this as part of writing the first draft of the Contesting
article on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contesting).  The 
first contest that I could find information about was the 1928 ARRL 
International Relay Party.  The ARRL was principal in organizing the 
Trans-Atlantic Tests in the 1920s, and in 1927 decided to modify the 
event to one that encouraged making as many DX contacts as possible, and
introduced a scoring system by which entrants could be ranked.  The 
ARRL called the new contest the International Relay Party, a name that 
would be changed in 1936 to the ARRL International DX Contest.

I would love to have more concrete details of early contests, such as 
the Oceania DX Contest, to improve the history section of that article.


> Many thanks and 73,
> Stewart
> GM4AFF
>  

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-- 
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
kenharker at kenharker.com
http://www.kenharker.com/