[UK-CONTEST] Encouraging Contesting

[Darrell G0HVQ]

Richard

You've hit the nail on the head - for me anyway.

Many years ago, I got inspired to try contesting after picking up a couple 
of US ham publications on holiday and reading them on the beach. As you say, 
it came across as exciting.

Generally though, I think the US publications are much more positive in 
their approach to amateur radio than the UK press, both Radcom and PW come 
across (to me anyway) as pretty negative at times, as though we're fighting 
a losing battle against time. How about some good news stories e.g. 'TXF 
jetting off round the world on a regular basis giving us all those new 
countries.

I think part of the problem is trying to be too factual - the US mags give 
you more of a flavour of the event e.g. for Field Day, they publish recipes 
(a bit corny), lots of photos, stuff about the preparation and team, etc. As 
we all know, it's not just turning on the radio, doing the contest, then 
switching off....it's all in the preparation and organisation. How about 
sharing some lessons learned - contesters tend to be at the peak of the 
hobby, so what may seem obvious to us may not be obvious to the general 
radio community.

Just my thoughts

73
Darrell G0HVQ


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Newstead" <g3cwi at btconnect.com>
To: <uk-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 11:49 PM
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] Encouraging Contesting


>A recurring theme in this group is "how to encourage contesting?". Perhaps
> one way is to improve the way in which contests are reported in the UK? I
> have been reading the ARRL's reports on a minority contest recently and
> have been impressed by the inspirational quality of the writing.
>
> Check out:
>
> http://www.arrl.org/contests/results/99/10ghz.pdf
>
> and
>
> http://www.arrl.org/contests/results/2004/10GHz.pdf (change year to pick
> up more recent commentaries - they are all good)
>
> These are well-written, inspirational pieces, carefully designed to
> encourage contesting. I can recall nothing of similar quality here in the
> UK.
>
> Amateur radio should be exciting, and contesting should be especially so -
> and yet so many contest reports here are dull, often poorly written,
> factual accounts.
>
> How could we raise the standards?
>
> 73
>
> Richard
> G3CWI
>
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