[UK-CONTEST] Encouraging Contesting

[Dave Sergeant]

On 29 Jun 2008 at 23:49, Richard Newstead wrote:

> 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.

As an ARRL member and hence receiving QST I would echo Richard's 
comments. The coverage of contests in QST is excellent - although they 
do not now include the line scores (web access only) the writeups 
certainly give a strong flair to the events and are interesting read 
even though you never participated in that event. In recent months, 
after the scrapping of morse as a requirement in the US, they have been 
including a special feature article each month aimed at beginners and 
contests. Coverage these days in RadCom tends to be limited to the bare 
facts, apart from the likes of IOTA, NFD, VHF NFD and the Commonwealth 
contest which still get good writeups. Remember also that in the US 
Field Day is a hugely popular activity and very much more of a club 
event than it seems in this country.

On the contrary of course we seem to have a small minority of anti-
contest people who seem to get far more attention than they deserve. 
One or two of them have been trying to force their views repeatedly on 
the Wikipedia Contesting article, of which many of you will be aware. 
This has now spread to the RSGB WP page, with presumably the same 
person/s claiming that INCREASING contest activity on the HF bands is a 
cause of a decline in amateur radio and reduction in the society 
membership! More interesting articles on contesting aimed at 
interesting the general readership may well serve to counter this 
movement.

73 Dave G3YMC

http://www.davesergeant.com