[CQ-Contest] contests and participation on air

[Charles Harpole]

No real news to most of us but maybe more striking in signal-poor South
East Asia----- contests GET HAMS ON THE AIR.  Then, no contests equals lots
of artificially dead bands.

Many times in week days, I can tune ALL of the HF bands and hear less than
ten ham-originated signals totally !  Think of it, most bands TOTALLY DEAD
and at any time day or night even with high flux times.  And it is not
propagation's fault;  there are just no hams on the air that would
propagate to me near Bangkok.

THEN comes a huge contest weekend and all the bands light up with hundreds
of signals, maybe thousands (the thousands calling me in zone 26, for
example).  Twenty and fifteen have no blank spaces to slip in to start a CQ
and a run!

The fact is that without contests (and DX chasing) ham radio would appear
to have disappeared if listening around.  12 meters with less than 25
spots!  Imagine !

Contests and DX sell radios and antennas;  get people improving their rigs;
and get hams off the Internet and back on the air.

Tell all this to the grumpy few rag chew groups too lazy to move to the
WARC bands.  But, get on the air, hams!  Bands are open and waiting.

73

Charly, HS0ZCW