[UK-CONTEST] Contest Calendar or Not

[Dave Lawley]

>HFCC have lost the plot and bottled out. Chris G3SJJ (past HFCC member and
>chair)

I can't let this sort of thing go unchallenged. Sadly, Chris ended his
time as HFCC chair having lost the confidence and support of every
one of his committee members, and that obviously rankles.

He refers to discussion, negative at times, on this reflector and I
certainly
regret there isn't more discussion of hardware, tactics, advice, rather
than
endless debates about rules. I have had several comments about the 
content on here and a number (including some HFCC members) have
un-subscribed. I haven't heard a single positive suggestion on this
reflector about how we might capture the new generation of M3s and 
turn them into contesters.

There's obviously a debate about the LF cumulatives but let me remind 
you of some comments about these contests that were on this very reflector 
just under two years ago, reproduced below. In small part, the cancellation

of the cumulatives was a response to these comments, which just illustrates

how dangerous it can be to take note of comments on an Internet forum.

"activity was dismal by any standards, and this contest must surely be 
past its sell by date"
"In the contest I found I ran out of contacts very quickly, the second
hour was really slow"
"Tough going again"
"An enjoyable event once again but activity definitely dropped off towards
the end"
"As for the LF Cumulatives, they are fun as they are, but it would
certainly 
be interesting to try a sprint type event instead.. however I fear that
entry 
numbers/activity may drop if this change does happen"
"Still considerably quieter in the second hour though"
"Yet again tough going"
"Note to HFCC, please switch off this contest's life support machine"
"Only 16 in the next hour! where did they all go"
"I do wonder if they could be reduced to 90 minutes thereby removing 
the frustrating last 30 minutes"
"...the contest is still a bit too long, erm about 2 hours too  long
actually"
"in the end the biggest signal wins in this contest, which is why I don't 
like it; there's simply no finesse, just wham bang thank you ma'am"
"Trash the event and save the ionosphere"
"best ever first half hour in a LF Cumulative Contest. Sadly I only just 
managed to get the same number of QSOs again in the remaining one
and a half hours"
"Having listened to some of the LF cumulatives - they are a 
total waste of time for everyone.    Ditch the whole lot"
"Looking at the RSGB HF contest calendar, a lot of the contests seem 
to be 'outdated', especially those that encourage inter-G working, 
without the requirement to work 'multipliers'"

You can see that it's very hard to reach a concensus. We made some
fairly radical changes two years ago, and are now getting a lot of grief 
over the cumulatives. Chris calls for changes in a number of areas
and it's likely some of those changes would call forward more negative
comment on the reflector. Chris has been pushing a multimode field
day for a while but this does not have widespread support, and I recently
heard from the DARC rep Manfred, DK2OY who confirmed that they also 
do not support a combined CW/SSB field day.

One change this year is the introduction of Cabrillo, which is becoming the
world wide de facto standard. We were pleased to see suggestions on 
this forum that HFCC should accept Cabrillo but somehow Chris has 
managed to caricature the change as 

"... a tightening up of the log entry procedure with all most compulsary
use of SD"

I was the one who re-wrote rule 9 once we made the decision to go for
Cabrillo. G3XTT and G3UFY put in a lot of work to prepare the ground
for this. I don't see how the new rule can be seen as tightening up, but
instead it standardises and it does not make SD compulsory at all.
We continue to endorse SD since it supports all RSGB contests, and it 
is easy for newcomers to learn. I agree about the drawbacks, and many 
contesters will choose instead to use CT, TR, NA, Writelog, N1MM as 
appropriate - all of which support Cabrillo.

Just a quick plea while we're on Cabrillo. We still want to know what
equipment and antennas you use, as it can help to add interest to the
writeup. Please include this with any other soapbox comments in the header.

I was on the HFCC when SSB AFS started, and we have discussed the
anomaly of 5 per. team for CW and 3 per. team for phone several times.
If the CW leg were reduced to 3, maybe a couple more clubs would
come on, but already there are plenty of entries with less than five. On
the other hand, some clubs would no longer have to work hard to get
numbers 4 and 5 into the team, with the result that the overall entry 
level would reduce. We also discussed raising the phone level to 5
per. team but felt this would put intolerable pressure on the limited
part of the band we use, especially in view of the deliberate QRM
from SSTVers. Maybe this analysis is wrong - what do others think?

Finally Chris tries to throw some mud by talking about "sinister" 
aspects of resistance to rule change. There is value in having
stability in rules, year after year, unless there is good reason
to change. So although he and Clive have suggested starting the
topband contests an hour earlier, we would also want to hear from
others who are not past winners, and we would want to consider
whether this really made sense in propagation terms, and was
likely to result in higher G entry. What would certainly happen in 
the first year, or two, would be that some overseas entrants would
be unaware of the rule change and would miss the first hour,
despite our best efforts at publicity. That's not in itself a reason
for resisting a change if it is justified on other grounds, but if there 
was no strong case for change, then best to leave as it is.

73, Dave G4BUO (HFCC member and past chair, who would never
slag them off in public)

A postscript having read Andy G4KNO's comments about the
cumulatives. There is no conspiracy, it is cock-up. The diary seems
to be done by someone at HQ, without knowledge of the Radcom
Editor or anyone on HFCC. I suspect there were cumulative dates in
the 2002 diary as well, with whoever wrote them just following on from
the previous year. We were all unaware of this until he raised it on 
the reflector, and it was not the subject of a split decision on the 
committee.