[UK-CONTEST] CQWW 160 SSB

[Dave Sergeant]

I wasn't going to comment further on this thread, but statements like 
make me boil.

Your numbers don't make sense. In CQWW CW 2009 there were 6,000 
entrants. Assume that around 25% of those were serious entrants, 1,500, 
with quite a few of them multi-multi on all bands simultaneously and 
mainly running. That makes no more than 1,000 active on any band at any 
time. Take the casual operators and those not even more casual who just 
come on for a short time, and I would venture for most bands at any 
particular location there are only 500 or so stations with large-ish 
signals.

Apart from 160m and 40m (which started this thread) there is never any 
need for SSB to operate below bandplan limits or for CW to go much 
higher than 14120 say. There does need to be hard limits in the rules  
for say not below 7025 on SSB or RTTY, but 'variable bandplans' have 
already been discussed at IARU and thrown out and unrealistic - how do 
you define how 'major' a contest has to be to qualify and how do you 
pre-notify the non contest community. Won't work, full stop.

I do contests myself as you know, and enjoy many of them. It is good 
that it generates activity on the bands, which sadly most of the time 
are very quiet (a sign that many stations come on ONLY in contests, 
another criticism I hear). But I have little interest in many of the 
lesser contests that spring up sometimes unannounced when all I want to 
do is to find a few new DX slots and find I can only work Ukraine in 
that particular contest - so all the DX has also given up for the 
afternoon.

Like it or not, there is not the interest in contests outside this 
reflector that some suggest. I have been trying to get more of our 
members active in CC and like, but it is an uphill struggle, many are 
just not interested. There is certainly a large section of our amateur 
community averse to them and they simply don't accept being told the 
sort of arguments put forward here. We need to accept both sides of the 
argument.

73 Dave G3YMC

On 3 Mar 2011 at 14:00, ANDY COOK wrote:

> However - and this is the big BUT - these segments MUST be sized
> appropriately to the relative activity levels between the contest and
> 'peace-time' weekend conditions. Fair and equal access should mean just
> that - if there are 40000 people taking part in a major international
> contest - equating to say 5000 people simultaneously active on the band,
> then they should be allocated spectrum in accordance with the ratio of
> that to 'peace-time' operators. I don't know exactly what that ratio
> would be (but I bet technologies like Skimmer & RBN could tell us for CW
> at least if the restriction on only reporting CQ-ing stations was taken
> off) - but I'd take a wager that it's between a factor of 10 and 100 for
> most significant contests, and way towards the top end of this for the
> big ones. 


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