[SCCC] self spotting

[Paul J]

I have to say that contesting is an often misunderstood and maligned part
of the hobby - but -  many of the other parts of the hobby fail to keep
newly licensed people interested.  Repeaters, rag chewing, QRP, Emcomm, etc
have proven not to keep people engaged after they become newly licensed.
And the path from tech ticket to contesting is not very clear.  It is
perceived as a more advanced part of an already technical hobby.

Young people like games, and they like streaming online.  When I try to
explain my interest in contesting to people who don't understand ham radio
in the first place, I ask them to imagine an olympics except anyone can
join from their own home.  I like to think they start to understand from
this aspect.

I think the more we can equate contesting to other games and sports, the
better chance we have of drawing new participation.  If it took this rule
to allow folks to legally stream their contest experience on twitch and
experience the video-game like rush of an instant pileup by self spotting,
I think we owe it to ourselves to at least see how it pans out. We need new
contesters to add to the ranks, for sure.  I think that real-time
scoreboards and hopefully getting instantaneous results one-day will also
help bring people in to the fold by adding some more instant excitement.
Ham radio contests are competing with netflix, online video games, and
other modern passtimes for participants.  I would love to see people get
interested in contesting first, and then obtain their tickets to
participate in the excitement of the contests - rather than earn a ticket
to be part of a CERT team and then become lost in where to go next with
it.  Imagine some compelling livestreams, possibly with multiple stations
covered and using commentary almost like a sportscast.  This type of
advancement is nearly impossible with the old self spotting rules in play.

And I do agree that if we are dividing along assisted vs non assisted, we
should really be talking completely unassisted i.e. spinning a VFO and
using a pan adapter vs any other type of assistance including supercheck,
etcetera.  In fact, it would be great if a completely 'classic' contest was
sponsored that allowed none of the above, to appease everyone.

I guess my point is, lets see if this can help more than it hurts.  We will
never be able to go back to a pre-internet and pre-packet era, and this may
just be the thing to spur more participation.  People were already bending
the self spotting rules before, we're maybe better off by trying to bring
everyone into the same tent and see if some synergy and activity can come
from it, IMHO.

On Fri, Mar 10, 2023 at 10:00 PM Paul Kube <K6PO at outlook.com> wrote:

> Following up on what Drew said, it's pretty clear the self-spotting rule
> will affect CW contesting approximately not at all. For phone, it may level
> the field between big guns and the rest of us a bit. But overall this is
> much less of a big deal than check partials, call history files, exchange
> prefills, dupe checking, and other logging program aids that still count as
> operating unassisted.
>
> 73, Paul K6PO
>
> ________________________________
> From: SCCC <sccc-bounces at contesting.com> on behalf of Drew Arnett <
> arnett.drew at gmail.com>
> Sent: Friday, March 10, 2023 10:17 AM
> To: Southern Cal Contest Club <sccc at contesting.com>
> Subject: Re: [SCCC] self spotting
>
> It is going to be interesting to see how it plays out.
>
> Makes me think of SOTA activating.  HF CW QRP is so easy, it feels
> like cheating.  I call CQ SOTA twice and a pileup magically appears.
> Thanks to the RBN.  Even if I left the tuner in tune mode (6 dB less
> to the antenna).  HF SSB QRP, well, I'm too scared to try.  No RBN to
> magically create a pileup then.
>
> Drew
> n7da
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