[CQ-Contest] NCJ Article RE: Sweepstakes Change Suggestions

Tue Mar 20 13:42:09 EDT 2018

I actually have a nefarious, dastardly scheme to address this.  

The CWops group is minting a bunch of new cw operators.  I know some of the folks on this list do the CWTs and have been hearing higher and higher "numbers" and a decent number of folks with new or new-ish calls and a few "old timers" who have dusted off their paddles.  They have a structured training program and it really works.  For those who aren't aware, their website is www.cwops.org

The nefarious part (well not really) is, they've never intended on being a contest club per se, but of course, the "students" get exposed to the CWTs and more than a few end up with the contest bug.  To the extent you see new cw contesters at all these days, that is where they are coming from.  I have encouraged a couple of younger contesters, who already have proven talent on SSB and RTTY to sign up for their classes.  (They have a "CW Academy" and have recently started having dedicated "Youth CWA."  The "Prize" when they finish "Level 3" (which is more or less, conversational competence at 25wpm or so), will be an expense paid trip to KL7RA to operate during a CW contest.  We also do slow speed CWTs a few times per year.  Great chance for folks to get their feet wet.

I would love to see other Multi Op Contest teams do something similar.  If you have someone who seems to have the knack for contesting, but either doesn't know code, or doesn't feel confident enough with it, hook them up with the CWOps people, and then give them a (low rate, low stress) chair for a contest.

73
Steve KL7SB

-----Original Message-----
From: CQ-Contest [mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of W0MU Mike Fatchett
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2018 5:48 AM
To: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] NCJ Article RE: Sweepstakes Change Suggestions

I chase counties and we had a large group of SSB ops start to try CW. They started slow, made lots of mistakes, but after time many of them have gotten much much better.  Would any of them call into to a station sending 30 wpm plus.  Nope.  Would they if you were sending 15 to 20........Maybe if they were encouraged.   There are lots of people chasing all kinds of awards with counties or grids or states, etc that would live to work you.  They are just not going to be blown away at high speed.

I don't thing forcing people to learn CW or operate that mode made much impact on the CW bands in the past.  I think they are more crowded today than ever.  It used to be you could work DX on RTTY and CW as there were far less people to deal with.  That is not the case anymore with either mode.

We don't do a good job at nurturing new CW ops along.  I am not even sure the best way to nurture them other than education and trying to slow down.  I thing the Novice Roundup is gone as that was the one contest a Novice or Tech could get into where they were target audience and could get the taste of what contesting is and many more experienced contesters would get on and hand out contacts.    Is this something that can be recaptured?  Would it help?

W0MU

On 3/19/2018 11:33 AM, Bill via CQ-Contest wrote:
> Lots of common sense in this post.
>
>
> The main problem remains.  CW is a dying art and the FCC put that concept in high gear with no-code licenses.  People no longer have to, and most don't want to learn the code.  It's as simple as that.  If  you compare the checks in your logs you'll see lots of 2010-2017 for SSB but a much lower number for the CW.
>
>
> Bill  KH7XS/K4XS
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: W0MU Mike Fatchett <w0mu at w0mu.com>
> To: cq-contest <cq-contest at contesting.com>; cac-i 
> <cac-i at reflector.arrl.org>
> Sent: Mon, Mar 19, 2018 3:51 pm
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] NCJ Article RE: Sweepstakes Change 
> Suggestions
>
> I don't receive the NCJ so I have not read the article.  What I gather is that most people feel that the SSB part of the contest is ok but the CW part is not.  If most people feel that SSB fine the way it is, are people suggesting we make sweeping changes to fix the CW portion and then possibly breaking both?The exchange is long.  It makes the contest different.  This is good.  As stated by many we have plenty of rate contests where copying is not part of the contest.I have heard of lots of ideas but none of them really address the issue which is getting more people involved on the CW side.  Their are plenty of people trying CW or are proficient enough at slower speeds.    Most of the ideas allow more contacts from the same participants on other bands or by using other callsigns.    The reason the radio/callsign rules were put in place as I understand it, that when the club competitions were fierce, I don't thing they are as much any more, people would use other calls and onl
>   y work their club members.  I get that.  Good for them, but not good for the overall health of the contest.  I am sure people still do it, tough to catch.  SO2R changed much of contesting, tough to put it back in the black box.Is the CW solution a simple as slowing down and encouraging new or less competent cw ops to want to call you or is the goal to run at 45wpm and work nobody and listen to endless CQ's?  Will slowing down even help?   Maybe the ARRL needs to print some articles on encouraging people to try SS CW and explaining it better?The last couple hours of SS can be pretty fun.  Many people get on just for that period.Who are we fixing the contest for?  The top 50  or 100 that are the real competitors or are we making it fun and better for all?What we could be doing is breaking down the classes and putting the SO2 elite ops in one category and then trying to figure out how to put the rest in appropriate categories so we can do a better job at acknowledging them and
>   creating competition with similar stations and skills.NAQP is great for 12 hours.  How would it be for 24 hours.  I would suggest that it would get pretty slow on CW.  You can always milk SSB contacts on open bands.   Maybe the NAQP folks should give a 24 hour contest a try and see how it goes.  NAQP has been around a long time now if it was be so great, why has it never been tried?Changing for the sake of change is not a good idea.   Is the contest really broke?  I don't think so.  Could it be improved?  Maybe. Could we make it worse? easily!  Making large changes would change what the contest is.  I don't think that is a good idea.W0MU_______________________________________________CQ-Contest mailing listCQ-Contest at contesting.comhttp://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
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