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Contesting Online Speak Out


Speak Out: Sport or not?

One contester asked "Is contesting truly a sport? What other "sport" requires the direct and active participation of non-competitors?"

36 opinions on this subject. Enter your opinion at the bottom of this page.
[Speak Out Home Page]


Opinions...

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YO4RLP on 2003-12-04
A contest is a competition. A competition can have a sporting character exclusive in function by the sportsmanship of the participants.
73 de Relu, YO4RLP

w7dra on 2003-06-26
CONTESTING W7DRA style is a SPORT.
say you want to operate WPX, SOSB 80 lp. three days before the contest go to the basement, find an old arc5 cull, roiund up a power supply, get it working, pull out an amp (805, with a microwave hv xfmr using 866s), check it out, look over the receiver selection, decide upon an hq 120 with a bc453 q5er, check it out, make all switching wiring for change over, antennas. etc
by now two days have passed, load it all into the truck with a tent and some water and head for southwest washington.

its now 6 hours before the contest. set up the tent and the rig, put up two (yes two, not one) half squares at 90 degrees, and run 3 (yes 3) beverages.
it is now 9pm, i have been up since 7, start operating and operate until about 530am. crawl into the back of the truck and sleep on the metal bed.

and if you dont think this is a sport, i have some property in south flordia i would like to sell you

im 63, and man, i think i need a more seditatry pastime

wd8x on 2002-10-24
You know what? I don't care what you call it. For me its my time to do something I really enjoy. Every contact is awesome to me. I've been a ham for only six years on two continents with many callsigns so far and nothing brings me closer to amateur radio than contesting. I guess you could call it a sport. I call it CONTEST TIME!!!! Sort of Christmas and Birthday rolled up in one. Non-contesters I know can't figure this one out. I chase the rare ones and the not so rare ones. Its MY sport. Hey sport, have fun and joyfully work me this weekend in MY CONTEST!!!!!!

73 de WD8X

Anonymous on 2002-08-31
Come on guy's, since when is sitting down and trying to stay awake, a sport. A telephoneoperator, for an insurance-company, bank or whatever business, with a headset and entering data typing on his/her keyboard, answering (frustrated) customer's call's, does exactly the same. A radiocontest is no sport. It is simply a contest or competition. Same as a reading, writing, spelling, chess or whatever competition. I don't think that we call, participating in a gameshow on tv, a sport. Some people even claim that they practice passive sport, watching sport on tv, that's how bad it is these day's. About stamina, one can claim, you need that as well, staying awake, watching all that rubbish on tv. Foxhunting (finding a hidden radiostation, while running across a terrain), as we call it here, is a sport. Climbing towers, to get the fastest time, if someone would organize this, is a sport.
Sport is fysical, this means using your muscles and this does'nt mean having enough stamina to stay awake.
There could be some simularities between radiocontesting and sport. Some peoples cheat in sport (taking drugs) and some in contesting ( creative logging or much more than the legal limit power)
ON6EC

W4PA on 2002-05-10
Uh - actually, competitive bird watching comes to mind. Yes, there are people who do compete, and travel the world over to participate in birding competitions and are probably just as wrapped up in it as we are in radio.

Scott W4PA

ly2ox on 2002-05-10
Whata question?
If You are competing with somebody it is sport.Even in old Soviet days Sport functioniers understood this and included RADIO sport into general sports ranking classification,so some of us are "MASTERS or INTERNATIONAL MASTERS of SPORTS of USSR"...

vu3pai on 2002-05-07
It differs from man to man & also it depends ::-- how he thinks.

Anonymous on 2002-05-07
It is depend upon the mentality of the individual, one who thinks it is SPORT for him it is SPORT, one who thinks it is NOT SPORT for him it is NOT SPROT. Like this it differs.

Anonymous on 2002-05-06
"Stamp collecting involves more physical activity! "

Ha! That's a laugh. I guess you stay up more than 40-48 hours straight sticking stamps in an album? Ever climb a tower for your stamps?

k4za on 2002-05-04
Questions like this--dealing with semantics, or rhetorical issues--are fun, but, at bottom, remain simply word games. No more, no less. It doesn't matter, really, how you define radio contesting.
It matters more why you take part, what it teaches, gives or provides you, how you learn from such activity, and what level of fun you have from it.

Competition and achievement and skills and goals (to say nothing of tremendously draining experiences--running for 48 hours) all happen to you while "playing" with your radio.

Contests are good.

Does it matter how we define them? No, it matters more that we participate!

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