[UK-CONTEST] February 2006 Radcom

[Lee Volante]

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

> It does beg the question would the UK contesting community be better 
> served
> by a Separate national society or foundation, with its own web site and
> e-publication? An extension of uk-contest if you like.Where all relevant
> information, news, contest calendars, results can be displayed. I know its
> an onerous task  to run a web site and keep it updated.