[CQ-Contest] Gen-X contesters

[Dave Mueller]

Gentleman,

Please don't take Jim's Generation-X comment out of context.  I believe 
he is talking about the new breed of contesters, not those of us who 
happen to be to the left of the Contesting average age bell curve.  He 
may be an old curmudgeon (probably self admittedly), but he has been in 
the game longer than I have been alive and I respect his opinions.

"Back in the day", a good rate could be maintained because a large 
number of stations would tune the bands, looking for stations to work.  
Pileups were smaller, and more manageable.

Today, perhaps in the "Generation-X" of contesting, there is a large 
group who simply "click-and-shoot".  They run up and down the band map, 
calling spotted stations, be it skimmer or packet.  Can this be fun?  
Absolutely, especially if you are at a big station.  Wham, bam, 
in-and-out of the pile, off to the next one.  You can keep a really good 
S&P rate working the band this way.

Think about this from the DX station perspective.  Thanks to Skimmer, I 
generally get anywhere from 6-12 callers immediately after QSYing, once 
my call gets "skimmed".  If Skimmer doesn't find me, it's CQ CQ CQ CQ.  
After I work the skimmer users, it is back to CQ CQ CQ until I get 
spotted on the DX cluster.  You can distinctly tell when this happens.  
You go from no callers, then 2-3, to chaos in seconds.  Imagine a solid 
tone of zero beat callers, who are all calling the same speed and have 
4-letter calls in the case of NA (solid tone of noise, then silence, 
then repeat).  Eventually the pileup descends into chaos when no one can 
hear who you're coming back to.  As DX, I try to pull calls from the 
side of the pileup. Few get it, and they get worked quickly.  Most keep 
calling zero beat - the pileup isn't "trainable" as much as I try.  I am 
capable of pushing the rate meter up close to 300 but in these 
situations, my rate absolutely plummets.  My options are to go split (to 
K3EST's chagrin) or to QSY (and repeat the above).

Is this the fault of the "Generation X" of contesters?  I don't think 
so.  They are simply adapting to technology and doing what they find 
enjoyable.  Activity is a good thing.  N6TJ is simply trying to expose 
that there is a negative effect to this, from the rarer DX station 
perspective.  In a DX contest, this may have detrimental effects as 
casual DX operators may decide to skip the contest, and serious 
contesters are somewhat limited in what they can do regardless of 
experience and skill.  This is exacerbated for DX located far from EU 
and NA, because of shorter openings to these concentrations of activity.

73, Dave N2NL (NH2T)