[UK-CONTEST] Too many contests.

[Lee Volante]

Hi Jim,

For what it's worth, I've entered over 100 contests so far in 2005, and the 
autumn season hasn't even kicked in yet.  (I admit I'm probably the 
exception rather than the rule!)  I agree there are too many contests on the 
calendar overall - and there's no mechanism in place to properly police it 
on a world wide basis.

As Stewart said, there should be at least one 'mode' free most weekends. 
But from the look of the calendar, 'other' mode events are now appearing too 
on more weekends.  Sometimes there is SSB / CW / RTTY traffic from separate 
events at the same time. 40m especially suffers of course.  Sometimes 
contests can co-exist and be mutually beneficial to each other, and at other 
times not.  Data mode contesting is on the increase and there have been 
several new events added in recent years.  And with a little publicity and 
the power of the Internet people go on the air and enter.  I think only 
extreme poor participation would get the message across that a certain 
format / date is not great.  How do you convince people that if they 
supported contest 'x' instead of 'x' and/or 'y' we'd see higher rates, 
bigger scores, perhaps more fun ?

Some consolidation would seem to be in order - but it has yet to happen and 
would require large amounts of coordination between national societies, 
magazines and other groups organising them. And even if we did merge or stop 
a few 'single country works the world' events, there's nothing to stop 
anyone on the planet creating a new event and 'claiming' any of the freed up 
weekends.  This happens already.

Sorry to seem negative - but I don't believe there's a great deal that can 
be done. I hope I can be proved wrong on this matter ! It's similar to 
trying to get people to stop watching so much reality TV with the intention 
that not so much will be broadcast. You or I might stop watching, but we're 
not enough of a critical mass to make anything happen.

Whilst I'm here, the HFCC has been listening carefully to all the 21/28 
feedback, and also from the cover sheets from the entrants.  There will 
almost certainly be a change of some sort for 2006.  Whilst the recent 
memory of poor conditions is fresh, I was reminded just last weekend that it 
was only a few years ago we had the highest ever activity for this contest. 
Conditions will return in time, but dominance over WAG probably won't !  The 
calendar for next years events should also be published soon.  Thanks for 
everyone's patience.

73,

Lee G0MTN

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "j kellaway" <jkellaway at btinternet.com>
To: <UK-Contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 7:37 PM
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] Too many contests.