[CQ-Contest] Posting Scores

[Ward Silver]

 >  Watching an actual operation to see the fun and actually operating 
is going to do that.

Who among us has ever actually watched someone operating a radio contest?

/sarcasm_on
CW or RTTY contest:
[15 minutes of silence and keyboard clicking]
Dammit!
[more silence and clicking]

Phone contest:
Call sign five nine something [pause, click click] thanks your call sign
Call sign five nine something [pause, click click] thanks your call sign
Call sign five nine something [pause, click click] thanks your call sign
Dammit!
Call sign five nine something [pause, click click] thanks your call sign
/sarcasm_off

As a several-times WRTC referee, I can attest that without full 
involvement in the action, it's not very much fun.  Actually, the better 
the competitor, the less there is to watch.  It would be like watching 
video from a GoPro camera mounted on a marathon runner - if it's 
interesting, they're losing :-)

Seriously, the "metadata" is a required part of what would make 
radiosport interesting, even to other hams.  Radiosport is a sport that 
happens in our *head* and not much else, physically.  Where is the beam 
pointed, how loud are signals, who are you going to pick out of the 
pile, when are you going to drop your call in, who else was calling that 
you beat to the DX, what's happening on the second radio, think you can 
move that mult to 15, when is 40 going to open to Japan, who's crowding 
in below you, etc etc etc.

This is why it's hard to explain to non-hams and even non-contesters 
what the attraction is.  Real-time score reporting is just a start - you 
don't have to watch anybody else's score, of course, and the top ops 
probably will never look at those web pages...which is fine. Unless we 
are going to replace ourselves exclusively through one-on-one mentoring, 
we should be thinking about how to make the sport something others can 
experience to some degree as a spectator and that means the whole sport 
and not just numbers or the back of our heads.

73, Ward N0AX