[CQ-Contest] Musings on amateur radio contesting

[David Gilbert]

This is kind of an extension of the other comments I just posted on FTx 
and contesting ...

We are all conditioned to think in terms of what has been and what we 
have, and we often unnecessarily constrain ourselves accordingly.  I'm 
73 years old and I've read countless admonishments for decades 
expressing the need to bring more young people into the hobby, yet we 
don't really do anything different to accomplish that.  We don't have to 
destroy the hobby to change it, but our demographics are not going to 
improve without some degree of change.

Here are some areas where I think we are being mentally hidebound:

1.  Pure rate doesn't have to be king.  A contest where the top score 
involves 100 contacts could be just as engaging as a contest where the 
top score is 5,000 contacts.  It all depends up what kind of activity is 
needed to generate those contacts.  A contest format that requires me to 
be constantly and intensively involved in order to end up with 100 
contacts should be just as rewarding, and potentially more interesting, 
than one that requires me to do the same thing over and over again at a 
high rate the entire time.

2.  FTx is just a really effective weak signal encoding/decoding scheme, 
but WSJT-X as an implementation has convinced everyone that FTx is 
operationally rigid, too automated, and devoid of differentiating 
skill.  I guarantee that does not need to be the case.

3.   For some reason we seem to think that a computer is OK for logging, 
band maps, and transmit macros, but not much else.  Why can't some 
colorful graphics be involved that are actually part of the competitive 
process of chasing contacts and optimizing scores? Gaming tends to have 
a bad name in these circles because it is alien to many and because it 
is an alternate activity for youngsters versus radiosport, but I fail to 
see why elements of gaming can't be included in radio contesting.  
Again, it is only mental inertia disguised as "tradition" that keeps us 
from thinking more broadly ... and more enticingly to new blood.

For what it may be worth ...

73,
Dave   AB7E