[CQ-Contest] Encouraging Casual Participation in Contests

[Tim Shoppa]

Pete writes:
> There is a reasonably simple and straight-forward way to encourage more
of this, potentially
> yielding more people for us to work. We need interconnection between CQ
and ARRL contest
> databases, so that any contact that is in both stations' log in a given
contest can be claimed for
> ARRL and CQ award credit without going through the QSL card process.

> I'm not underestimating the programming effort involved, I hope, but
surely some
> combination of volunteer and professional staff involvement can get it
done. It could start
> small - perhaps a pilot involving the CQWW open log database and DXCC.
Imagine the
> value added to LOTW if it were the hub for this process, and the
potential increase in
> DXCC fees. Surely, this is a win-win proposition.

For a little while in the 1960's or 1970's, the ARRL DXCC desk would give
you DXCC credit for a ARRL DX contest QSO if you gave them the QSO details
and they still had the DX's paper contest log available to cross-verify. So
there is some precedent for this. Although they discontinued this ability
probably due to the PITA of keeping paper contest logs around.

The majority of high-volume contesters use LOTW today so I'm not really
sure it's necessary.

There are even spotting clusters that will tag known LOTW users with
[LOTW]. I wonder if CQ log statistics could show that LOTW users work more
weak-ass in-search-of-DXCC-credit callers than the non-LOTW users.

Tim N3QE