[CQ-Contest] A new "DX cluster" experience for contesters

[Mike N0HI]

As a younger operator, I can tell you with 100% certainty and without a 
sliver of doubt that if we were all using paper logs and footwarmers, we 
would have even less attention from the younger crowd.  The high-tech 
stuff has "coolness potential".  You can say how much fun your paper 
dupe sheets and Nixon-era radios were (and probably still are), but that 
isn't going to attract the new crowd.

The entire "technology" argument continues to baffle me.  I don't climb 
on a United Airlines two-passenger biplane to go to Florida and I don't 
use a horse-and-buggy to get across town.  If I wanted to do those 
things, however, I would still do them.  I just wouldn't complain that I 
couldn't keep up with an F-22 or that the people driving Mustangs were 
"cheating".  I also wouldn't say that flying an F-22 or driving a 
Mustang is unethical.  It's the advancement of technology.  Use it or 
don't -- but don't say I'm any less of an operator because I do.

-- 
Mike DeChristopher, N0HI
http://www.n0hi.net




Idle-Tyme wrote:

> On 4/17/2010 9:26 AM, K1TTT wrote:
>   
>> Right, so we all need to keep adding to our fun so we keep coming back for
>> more and attract new operators!  New technology adds to my fun, so I am more
>> likely to get out on the lake to try to do something more than before with
>> it.  If I had to keep using manual cw with paper logs and no spotting
>> network I would probably have given up years ago.
>>     
> Really?
>
> You would have given up years ago?  I am just curious as to why?
>
>   I've been a ham since 1975,  and a contester just as long. First 
> contest was Novenmber Sweepstakes of 75, been hooked ever since.  But I 
> have never had a "Contest" station.  I was hired out as an operator at 
> big gun stations in the 70's. Well i shouldn't say "Hired"  sounds like 
> I was getting paid.  My "Pay" was the fun of operating at a Big Gun Station.
>
> Otherwise all my contesting has been with a Drake TR-4 my second rig i 
> got in 1976 after someone in a Mc Donalds parking lot hit my car and i 
> used the money to buy the Drake.  But my station has been just that 
> Drake and Low dipoles,  max elevation was like 30 feet?
>
> No computers,  not clusters, even the old radio type where a local 
> repeater people would announce verbally when they spot something Long 
> before the packet clusters came to be.  never used any of that, and 
> still love contesting.  only last year did i start to use the computer 
> for logging,, till then it was still paper logs and dupe sheets.  And it 
> still remains fun. And I still don't use the clusters.
>
> Maybe all the high tech stuff has taken the "FUN" out of it for you 
> where you use your skills to work as many as possible and not rely on 
> all the fancy electronic stuff to find it all for you?
>
> Maybe?
>
> Joe WB9SBD
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