[CQ-Contest] Whither Africa?

[Tom Haavisto]

Hi Charly

I think you bring up a good point that is being overlooked.  I remember
hearing about a QSO from a friend who was chattting with a "rare" one some
years ago.  To help put things in perspective for the rest of us, image the
following:

You get on the air.  There is an instant pileup.  Does not matter when, or
what band you get on, there is an instant pileup.  As soon as you are
spotted, you are instant prey for the masses.  The expectation is you will
start running without taking time for dinner, potty breaks, family time -
whatever.  Your whole purpose is simply to "be there".  If you don't get on
enough, something must be wrong.

After you are done with that, you need to deal with a mountain of QSL cards
that magically find your way to you.  Order cards from the printer, then
start filling out return cards.  Some with money enclosed, some with IRCS,
some with return envelopes, some with unusable postage, etc.  Then, you
need to find your way to the post office to send out the return cards.


 If you had a QSL manager, you had to photocopy your paper log, and mail it
to him.  He would then ship you boxes of cards.


Granted - things have gotten better over the years,  LOTW has releived a
lot of the pressure for cards.  But - some still applies.  And - there is
more that is not mentioned here.


Sometimes it is helpful to consider what life must be like for the person
on the other end before we get TOO excited about lack of activity from
known stations, or delays in getting QSL cards.  It can make the
frustration more bearable :-)

Tom - VE3CX




On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 3:03 PM, Charles Harpole <hs0zcw at gmail.com> wrote:

> What I hear "foreign" operators say about contests.....  By "foreign" I
> just mean operators who are in fairly rare spots;  of course they are
> residents, not foreigners, where they live.
>
> What I hear is that ops in these places 1. got their licenses for different
> purposes than contesting or being DX, 2. want to use ham radio for other
> non ham -type goals, and 3. do not enjoy trying to ride herd on a mass of
> rude bad operators.  They do not enjoy responding to QSL requests, paper or
> computer data bases.  They do enjoy an hour or two here and there around
> their other daily duties of relaxed chat and no-pressure on-the-air
> experiences.
>
> There are likely a majority of hams that are very similar except those
> other hams are in locations surrounded by many Type A contesters, and thus
> their presence is not so much missed--although it would be great to have
> more casual ops to work.  The "rare" ops think of contests as just a wall
> of noise, well beside the point of their goals.
>
> Believe me, it is very easy to get sick of scads of people calling while
> you are trying to work one.  Many just opt out.
> 73, Charly HS0ZCW
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 6:24 AM, Chip and Janet Margelli <
> margelli at socal.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > Several folks have remarked about how bad the Sunday afternoon dawg piles
> > on Africa were, especially on ten meters (C91KHN and 5H3EE were utterly
> > buried).
> >
> > Surely there must be some connection to the fact that there are so few
> > African stations on these days. How many of the following did you put in
> > your log?
> >
> > 3B8, 3B9, 3C, 3X, 5A, 5N, 5R, 5T, 5U, 5V, 5X, 5Z, 6W, 7P, 7Q, 7X, 9G, 9J,
> > 9L, 9Q, 9U, 9X, A2, C5, EL, FH, FR, S7, S9, ST, SU, TJ, TL, TN, TR, TT,
> TU,
> > TY, TZ, VQ9, XT, and Z2. . .not to mention some of the rarer islands.
> >
> > Where have all the Africans gone?
> >
> > IARU--there are a lot of countries there that seem not to have any
> > activity. More pile-ups to distribute the stations more widely surely
> would
> > ease the pressure on all.
> >
> > And it would contribute to fewer flying objects on Sunday afternoon in
> the
> > shacks of folks who are getting trampled.  ;o)
> >
> > 73 de Chip K7JA
> > _______________________________________________
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> > CQ-Contest at contesting.com
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> Charly, HS0ZCW
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