[UK-CONTEST] How many people go contesting?

[Bob G3PJT]

Yes Roger but to make such comparisons one has to start with estimates. 
To get the UK number of contesters is reasonably straightforward since I 
guess that you only have to look at the big contest logs eg IOTA CQWW 
and that will get most of them. For my purpose the difficult bit is 
getting an estimate of the non-contesters who are active in the UK 
amateur population. As you say this is a sum of minority interests of 
which the casual chatterers are the most difficult to estimate. And 
there are the inevitable overlaps. However I think it is worth a bit of 
effort to work it out.

73 Bob G3PJT

Roger G3SXW wrote:
> Bob,
> We have many sub-hobbies so I believe that it is *relative* size of 
> population rather than actual size which matters. In other words there 
> are x times more contesters than ATVers, y times more than ARDFers, 
> etc. I think we all know that contesters are one of the biggest on-air 
> sub-groups.
>
> I doubt that there is any way to make valid quantifications. If all 
> RSGB contest logs could be dumped into one central data-base then you 
> could see how many unique call-signs are present. The adjudicators 
> would have to remove Busted calls first, and presumably single 
> instances might be discounted, only designating a contester as such if 
> he joins in (makes QSOs, not sends in logs) say minimum three contests 
> per year.
>
> Just for comparison CQ World-Wide attracts some 30,000 different 
> contesters to join in on the air each year (both modes, but with 
> Busted calls removed).
> Cheers - 73 de Roger/G3SXW.
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob G3PJT" <g3pjt at btinternet.com>
> To: "UK Contest" <uk-contest at contesting.com>
> Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 6:05 PM
> Subject: [UK-CONTEST] How many people go contesting?
>
>
>> Hi
>>
>> I was told over the weekend that ,
>>
>> ' only 10% of the readership of RadCom go contesting' , with the
>> implication that not much attention should be given to contesting.
>>
>> As that 10% would be 2500 amateurs it seems to me that this might be 80%
>> of the truly active radio amateurs in the RSGB, active in the most
>> general sense..
>>
>> Anybody got any ideas as to how many RSGB members actually use our
>> spectrum on a regular basis?
>>
>> Or can you suggest a way I might estimate it?
>>
>> 73 Bob G3PJT
>> _______________________________________________
>> UK-Contest mailing list
>> UK-Contest at contesting.com
>> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/uk-contest 
>
>