[VHFcontesting] Activity in the ARRL VHF Contests SInce 1991

[James Duffey]

Gene - Thanks for the kind comments on the data. I have included some more in this post, incorporating your % of max participation. 

Looking at The January contest is interesting in that it was the first VHF contest, followed by the September and June contest. Of even more interest is the fact that activity in the January VHF contest peaked in 1961. There have been local peaks since then, the most recent in 1996 as you point out.

Here is a table with the activity for all the ARRL VHF contests, with a percentage of the mid 90s max, 1996 for January and June, 1997 for September. While the January and September contests show the trend you note, that is that activity has been more or less constant in this decade and down from the mid 90s peak, the June contest has shown significant growth over the decade and is higher than the mid 90s peak. In fact the 2006, 2008, and 2009 contests set all time highs for entries in the June contest. 

Table - VHF Contest Activity since Rover Class was introduced in 1991

Year	Jan	%1996	June	%1996	Sept    %1997

2010	759	62	NA	NA	NA	  NA
2009	649	53	1136   123	594	  79
2008	709	58	1074   116	482	  64
2007	778	64	860	93	561	  75
2006	793	65	1047   113	531	  71
2005	712	58	840	91	629	  84
2004	834	68	766	83	558	  74
2003	798	65	818	89	520	  69
2002	802	66	672	73	535	  71
2001	790	65	680	74	553	  74
2000	820	67	749	81	583	  78
1999	966	79	701	76	606	  81
1998	1075	88	865	94	617	  82
1997	1182	97	837	91	751	 100
1996	1219   100	923    100	700	  93
1995	1171	96	837	91	686	  91
1994	1013	83	781	85	687	  91
1993	1036	85	818	89	621	  83
1992	958	77	840	91	591	  79
1991			710	77	415	  55

Why is the June contest healthy and the January and September contests pretty much holding their own? As you note, I suspect that the presence of those HF rigs with 6M introduced in the last decade coupled with lots of E-Skip and hence lots of activity in June have a lot to do with that. The FFMA supplying another award to chase is certainly another. It is all easier to grasp if you cut this table out and paste it into a spreadsheet and graph it. 

W9KGA is probably the guy who should be doing this analysis, he has a much better understanding of the ebbs and flows of VHF contesting activity since its inception than I have. 

I agree with you that VHF contesting needs to be made more attractive and to do this, as you say, we need to find a way for the guy with a limited station to have fun and rack up a reasonable score. How do you propose we accomplish this? - Duffey
--
KK6MC
James Duffey
Cedar Crest NM