[UK-CONTEST] RadCom and Contests

[Donald Field]

Just revisiting some of the recent correspondence, and Lee's post is a
useful reminder to me. Alex Kearns, the new RadCom editor, has offered
me a meeting at Potters Bar, wearing my new "Board Member for Sport
Radio" hat, to talk about contest and DX coverage in the magazine. I
don't expect miracles, for the reasons Lee laid out in his post. And, in
any case, detailed results, photos, soapbox, etc. can be posted on
websites much more quickly than they appear in a magazine (and in much
cleverer ways allowing, for example, searching results by category,
country, etc.). But I would be interested in any input from members of
this reflector. Can I suggest you write directly to me, please, and I
will synthesise the views as best I can (though I am sure they will not
all be on the same "frequency"!) - g3xtt at lineone.net  

Don G3XTT

-----Original Message-----
From: uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Lee Volante
Sent: 19 January 2006 20:33
To: uk-contest at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [UK-CONTEST] February 2006 Radcom

Hello folks,

I think we need to be careful about the true nature of the 'problem.'
I 
general I don't perceive there to be any great disatisfaction with the
RSGB 
HF and VHF Contest Committee websites.  The results can be published
there 
as soon as they are ready, calendars, news and rules are always
available. 
I'm sure this is a preferable situation to that what existed in the
past. 
There are several established contest calendar websites already for 
international contests - perhaps replicating one, just to include our 
domestic events - wouldn't be the best idea.

The IT and bandwidth for "UK-Contest" itself is kindly provided by
others we 
shouldn't forget.  Some of the comments brought up on this reflector
have 
certainly frustrated me over the years - but to temper that I'd be much
more 
in the dark without the hundreds of useful and interesting posts that
are 
made alongside the more contraversial ones.

The main issue I believe is to do with RadCom coverage. Where Tim G4VXE
does 
not have sufficient room to editorialise as we would like, the likes of
the 
CDXC Digest and GM-DX Digest do have a proportionately large amount of 
contest coverage, even considering that a good proportion of the
membership 
of those groups may not necessarily be interested in contesting either.
It 
is fortunate that portable, and especially DX oriented contest
operations 
are akin to DXpeditions in many respects and there are many crossover
areas 
of interest.  The same is true for what propagation DXers and contesters

need, what sort of stations, antennas, and software they will use also.
So 
the "special interest" published material is out there - maybe just not
in 
RadCom.  Several other people have also mentioned the likes of NCJ too.
So 
perhaps support these groups if you're not already.  Please send the
CDXC 
Contest section compiler some contributions - there's a large pool of 
untapped knowledge out there and sometimes he struggles by himself.. :-)

So I think we'll have to realise that the RadCom contest coverage will 
probably never be able to grow beyond what it is now, with Tim
publishing 
the results, and providing a good "down to earth" editorial to show the 
casual operators what contesting offers etc.  There are several one-off 
additions through the year too for the big field day or IOTA contest 
writeups - so I think actually we do better than it might be initially 
thought.

We probably have everything mentioned below already - but it's just not
all 
in the same place, or under the same banner.

73,

Lee G0MTN