[CQ-Contest] CQ-Contest Digest, Vol 132, Issue 2

[XV4Y]

Hi John,

I think we all agree on that. We need to find new contesters (and new HAMs).
That goes on pair with restructuring the scoring system in my mind.

This is how I characterized young people :
- They are mostly located in "southern countries" and India, China, South-East Asia. NA and EU have their population aging.
- They usually have young kids and work. They are not able to do 48 hours contesting. Any way of getting rewarded for even 6 hours of contest on 80m + 10m (one saturday evening and one sunday afternoon by example) will make them join the contest instead of complaining of being relegated to WARC bands.
- For the same reason above, their budget top priorities are home, food and school. Going to Aruba or buying a new tower in order to be competitive is far on their list.
- They don't like to wait. They were grown up in all mobile-phone and internet world. Waiting is suspicious. 1 month to wait in order to have the results of a 2 day competition is quite weird. I have no example coming to my mind were the jury decision is taking more time than the competition itself (apart from litigation to solve).

For me several recent changes to CQ contests rules go to the right direction :
- 5 days submission deadline
- classic and rookie overaly
Having to register before the contest and provide informations about your participation could allow to real-time or at least very fast score computation.
However this could be detrimental to our activity as it is opposed to some of its specificity :
- Going to a remote island often limits internet access.
- Being highly dependent on public infrastructures like telecom network is contrary to the core definition of amateur-radio : ability to handle communications by themselves.
- HAM are often independent and choose this activity because they can go following their own agenda. Requiring to register before will make a lot of the "small pistols" scared.

Just my own opinion.
73,
Yan.
---
Yannick DEVOS - XV4Y
http://xv4y.radioclub.asia/
http://varc.radioclub.asia/

Le 2 déc. 2013 à 11:06, cq-contest-request at contesting.com a écrit :

> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2013 18:19:22 -0500 (EST)
> From: K1AR at aol.com
> To: markzl3ab at gmail.com, cq-contest at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Evolving scoring systems
> Message-ID: <85b51.1e7acda.3fcd1dfa at aol.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
> 
> Good evening all,
> 
> As I type and note that we have received 15,578 logs in the CQWW contest (a 
> new record!), I have to ask the question: What problem are we trying to 
> solve  with changed scoring systems? It seems to me that the *real* problem is 
> that the  average age of a given contest operator submitting these logs is  
> approaching 100 y.o. (round numbers) and not a need to create  new methods 
> of calculating scores. 
> 
> BTW, new contests with creative scoring methods is very cool. The Stew  
> Perry is a great example of that.
> 
> Just another point-of-view...
> 
> 73, John, K1AR