[UK-CONTEST] Re VHFNFD stuff

[Tim Hague]

Well I was out with Dave BUO as the Windmill Group from near Ashford in 
Kent, it was very windy and quite worrying at times but hey ho we 
survived. We had some strange conditions working 9A and YU during the 
late night on 2M.
The Shepherd Neame was brilliant.
However some of the comments on here ring true, there is a real decline 
in operation on VHF and UHF in the UK during major contests, I can 
remember expecting to work 800 to 900 stations on 144MHz in the 80s, now 
we are lucky to work 400 even when conditions are good, I did pose the 
question `how long will NFD's of either type survive?', I recon 20 
years?, how about you guys?.
I've known most of the operators in the Windmill group for 25 years or 
more, we are not getting any younger, it is increasingly difficult to 
attract new operators, the current crop of M3/M6 (and this is not 
knocking them) do not seem to be interested, is this due to not knowing 
about contesting?, not being introduced by clubs..., or is it just that 
their aspirations stop at the handheld rig shown on the front of the 
RSGB novice handbook, I don't know.
When I was studying for my RAE I was a listener, the current licence 
scheme allows someone to get a basic licence after a weekends tuition, 
these people may have never heard serious operation on the bands, surely 
this cannot be right?.
When you do manage to light the spark the interest is there, we had a 
visit from a YL duuring VHFNFD, she started as a M3 and through a lot of 
work has now got her M0, she was fascinated by what we were doing and 
the stations we were working, with a bit of confidence and some help I 
hope she will be operating for us in years to come.

I would be interested in your comments on how we can retreive the 
situation, if its not to late.

Tim M0AFJ / G8GGP