[CQ-Contest] K5GO speaks out for youth in contesting

[Jim Brown]

On Sun,3/27/2016 9:23 AM, Michael Adams wrote:
> My working theory has been that amateur radio has become a hobby that people come to in middle age / later middle age (at least in North America).

 From my direct experience, I would say that most US hams active on HF 
are RETURNING to ham radio after being licensed and active in our youth, 
then drifted away for college, then a job and raising a family, and 
whatever else drew our interest in the interim.  That is certainly true 
in the clubs of which I've been a member or attended meetings, and it's 
also true at hamfests like Dayton, Pacificon, and Visalia.

Yes, there are exceptions -- NCCC has a half dozen or so active members 
in their 40s who have come from the world of IT; all have become good CW 
ops, two of them, N6WM and N6NUL have served terms as officers. Another 
of their generation, N6ML, doesn't contest much, but has a country count 
in the mid-320s in only about 8 years. N6PSE, also from that world, has 
lit up a half dozen or so rare DX entities in the last 5 years, often as 
a leader. So has KK6EK -- he's currently at VK0EK.

> Many of us have achieved a comfortable level of disposable income and can afford some toys, and we are more likely to own property that might accommodate antennas.

I think this is the key to our return to the hobby we loved as kids -- 
it still draws us, and how we have the wherewithal to participate at a 
level that gives us satisfaction.

BUT -- the proliferation of big stations has established a contesting 
environment where a guy with a small station, especially if he's in a 
city or suburb, can't have much fun. Limitations on antennas, RFI from 
hundreds of nearby noise sources, a wall of dirty transmitters with big 
power into big antennas, and archaic contesting and scoring rules all 
combine to make him feel like he's not really in the contest.

This RFI problem is not going away -- indeed, it's getting worse. 
Housing density, antenna restrictions, and RF noise combine to make HF 
operation almost impossible from our cities. When I left Chicago in 
2006, I was one of four hams active on HF in a city of about 3.4 
million; one didn't contest at all, one ran QRP from a small station at 
U of Chicago. That left me and AB9H as active contesters. I know of no 
hams active on HF from the city of San Francisco. Are there any in NYC 
or the densely populated near-in suburbs?  During NEQP, the only active 
participant(s) from Boston are mobiles who find a place in a park for an 
hour or so. Extend this to cities around the world that are homes to an 
increasingly large fraction of the world's population -- St. Louis , 
Minneapolis/St. Paul, Atlanta, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, London, 
Paris, Mexico City, Bogota, Berlin, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, 
Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, and so on.

I'm working on a 2-part NCJ article on chasing it and curing it; part 
one will be in the next issue. But it's going to be a never ending 
battle. Virtually everything new that plugs into the mains power system 
is another likely interference source, whether in our own homes or those 
of our neighbors. Boosting your own signal to get over high noise levels 
at the other end is the best reason for running high power, and the 
reason I started buying big power amps more than ten years ago and 
building the best antenna farm I could after moving to W6 ten years ago!

Bottom line -- RFI and the continuing greying of the HF ham population 
will combine to bring an end to ham radio as we know it before most of 
us are in the ground. What we CAN do in the interim is to change contest 
rules and practices so that more of today's hams are motivated to enjoy 
contesting. I think that while big multi-ops and SO2R increases the fun 
for those operators, they're bad for contesting because they chew up too 
much spectrum and limit the number of stations to work. (Yes, I do 
operate SO2R). And yes, a small multi-op can be a good way to train new 
contesters, but that's the only way that I see them contributing to the 
growth of contesting. But far too many pollute the bands with dirty 
transmitters, high power, and big antennas. The result is that 
contesting degenerates to a competition between those big stations, with 
most of the rest of us left out.  Far better to disperse those operators 
to their own stations, however modest, giving all of us more stations to 
work and fewer big dirty signals making it hard for us to hear them!

73, Jim K9YC