[CQ-Contest] KILLING THE GOLDEN GOOSE

[w2lc at twcny.rr.com]

My longtime friend George said:  Eliminating our category-of-choice seems a rather shabby reward for our trust and devotion over not just years, but decades. George I’m 100% with you on this. 

Operating assisted is not the new normal, just because someone declared it to be.

Not everyone has high speed and reliable internet access. I don’t, it’s getting better but the reliability is still rather poor. I even have power outages 7-8 times a year, fortunately usually short duration. I have a generator for that. But no back-up for the internet going down. As and I write this my internet access just came back up from being out since about 11PM last night.

I am not going to buy skimmer, or integrate internet spots into my operating. I suppose I could, but I’m not. I have no interest in that. And if I have to compete against those that are assisted, I won’t, I’ll bypass that contest. 

Sure I look at DXSummit once in a while, for DXing yes, but not for contests. And the RBN is fine and interesting, I’ve used that to see how my signal stacks up against others. But for contesting, nope not interested.

I pass by most stations when the packet pileup starts. I have a decent enough station to break pileups fairly quickly, but it’s not worth playing DXer and sitting in a pileup too long. And to those that don’t ID, you have a nil waiting for you, since I do not use spotting to get your callsign.

I have been operating more and even sending in my logs, trying to build back up to giving a couple contests a full effort.  Assisted only categories will drive me out of contesting, I won’t waste my time on that. 

And George’s take on who may not be aware of the survey is valid, Bob. Avoiding that does not make it better. There are many contesters who do not even look at this reflector, so posting it here is good but not all that effective. How many casual but interested contesters even read this reflector? I would say not many.

73 Scott W2LC