[UK-CONTEST] CQ magazine to withdraw contest sponsorship?

[Clive Whelan]

I thought uk contesters might be interested in the following
from a meeting between the CEO of CQ magazine and the
general manager of ARRL, reported in the Washington Post. I
am personally saddened by this news.

" CQ magazine has sadly decided to withdraw support from all
the contests it currently sponsors. As well as the huge
amount of adjudication work undertaken by our band of
willing volunteers, they have recently been the recipients
of an increasing volume of complaints about conditions,
sometimes virile, and occasionally abusive. In the current
sunspot minimum conditions entrants around the world have
typically been unable to make few if any QSOs on 28Mhz, and
even 21Mhz has been very patchy. We are puzzled that the
Amateur Radio community does not seem to realise that CQ
magazine has little control over  conditions, despite state
of the art "ionosphere warming" equipment and antennas
installed at Hicksville N.Y. However, it does seem that CQ
magazine has become negatively associated with these poor
conditions, and our circulation has suffered as a
consequence. While other magazines might  be happy with such
a scenario, CQ magazine does not wish to be associated with
anything except the highest quality , both of technical
articles, but also the results of the contests it sponsors.
Therefore, effective 4/1/2007 CQ magazine withdraws entirely
from its contest sponsorship. We are anxious to point up
that this is purely a matter of suspension rather than
termination, and the board of CQ magazine will review this
decision in 3-5 years time, and hopes to reinstate all
events at this time, subject to sufficient solar activity.
Finally, we envision a bright future for contesting in the
long term"

The full text of the conversation may be seen at :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/registra
tion/register&destination=login&nextstep=gather&application=
reg30-liveonline&applicationURL=http://www.washingtonpost.co
m/wp-dyn/content/liveonline/?nid%253Droll_discuss

73


Clive
GW3NJW