[CQ-Contest] Observations of a young ham

[David Gilbert]

I'm far from being young (I hit 70 this March), but as both a contester 
and a gamer I think I could add a couple of things to your list.

1.  Online gaming is extensive.  At any point in time you typically use 
more immediate skills than you do in contesting.  I'm not at all saying 
that upper tier contesting doesn't require amazing skills, or that 
overall they aren't similar, but I think the breadth required every 
minute in gaming exceeds that of contesting.  Just my opinion, of course.

2.  Gaming generates far more participation than contesting.  The major 
competitive games count their active players in the millions instead of 
the few thousands for contesting.  That means people have more 
opportunity to enjoy the activity every single minute of the day.  No 
waiting for the weekend, no dependency on propagation, no disrupting 
sleep patterns to hit prime time.

3.  (Embellishment of your #6) Gaming is totally real time.  You know 
exactly where you stand every minute of the battle/quest/whatever.

4.  This one may be the most relevant, in my opinion.  Gaming involves 
direct action/reaction against your opponent.  It's constant 
move-countermove the entire activity, sometimes with literally dozens of 
overlapping actions/reactions directly against your opponent in real 
time.  I can't think of any aspect of contesting that approaches this 
... and trust me, I've tried to think up a format that would provide 
it.  Somebody smarter than me needs to work on this.  I'm pretty sure 
nobody would be doing online gaming either if they had to spend several 
hours playing more or less in isolation relative to their direct 
competition and then wait a few days before early results showed where 
they stood.

I certainly agree with your comment about the visual aspect. There's 
really no comparison.

73,
Dave   AB7E



On 12/18/2016 10:42 AM, W0MU Mike Fatchett wrote:
> I had the opportunity to talk to my son in more detail and ask him why 
> contesting does not interest him.  Here is what we discussed.
>
> 1.  Cost to get in the game and have a chance to win is prohibitive.  
> You need a great station, land, etc to really win or compete.  The 
> playing field is so unbalanced that it becomes a show stopper.  For 
> him he has no costs when at home.  I consider my station modest with a 
> 70 ft tower and land to put up Inv L's and full sized 80m verticals 
> and some receiving antennas.  I could do more but we have horses and 
> they need to roam and are hell on things in the pasture.
>
> 2. You have to invest a lot of time to get good.  If he can not have a 
> really good station then why invest the time to get good if you are 
> not going to be able to really compete.
>
> 2. The tools we use to contest, logging software, packet look like old 
> dos programs.  He called them ugly and boring.  He is used to amazing 
> graphics in games.  I found this observation interesting. I feel that 
> the tools we have are pretty good and give me what I want to see 
> readily available.  I was not expecting this answer.
>
> 3. He is far more interested in using packet where he can immediately 
> chase things.  Packet essentially gives him a list of things to do or 
> goals.  It is more visual so more interesting.  He thought that more 
> automated systems would be interesting.  Young people and even us 
> older folk expect things to happen much faster.  They are the 
> generation of instant satisfaction and some of that even rubs off on 
> us older folk.
>
> 4.  Talking to someone over the airwaves is still pretty cool. You can 
> instantly talk around the world if the right condx exist, but we can 
> talk all over the world with our phones so it is not as amazing as it 
> once was.
>
> 5. CW is interesting but he was surprised that we don't have better 
> code readers.  While he would like to learn the code time is once 
> again the factor.  They have so many other outlets for entertainment 
> that it is hard to find time for all of them.
>
> 6.  Results take far too long to come out
>
> 7.  He proposed that all participants use a scoreboard type system.  
> Many of us have said this was something we need to do but have instead 
> met with amazing resistance and a ton of excuses why people refuse to 
> use it.  A system where everyone can check it out and see what is 
> going in in the contest.  We are back to visuals.
>
> 6. Playing radio in the car driving is fun because there is not much 
> else to do but drive.
>
> 7. He has his general license but he does not have the technical 
> skills or electronic knowledge to build a shack or decent station.  I 
> am not a great teacher especially to my own kids so I take some of the 
> blame for this but it is hard to teach people things when they don't 
> want to devote much time to it.  I feel a reluctance to even try to do 
> something without having the proper knowledge.  A far cry from when I 
> was young and tried all sorts of silly antennas and projects that 
> mostly failed miserably but boy did I learn from those mistakes.
>
> That pretty much summed up our hour long conversation and I am no 
> closer to figuring out how to sell ham radio and contesting to them.  
> I hope some will find this information helpful and interesting.
>
> W0MU
>
>
>
>
>
>
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