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High QSO Totals Offer Insight
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by N4SL on October 16, 2006
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Contesting seems to be suffering a bit from the '2nd day slow downs' more and more each year. Hot & Heavy on the first day, by the afternoon of the 2nd day there isn't any fresh blood.
Certainly the fact that individual scores are no longer published in QST will be a contributing factor in the future.
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RE: High QSO Totals Offer Insight
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by ad6zj on October 16, 2006
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And now for an unscientific survey of one...
In 2003 I stumbled into a contest or two.
In 2004 I participated in 2 contests and submitted logs
In 2005 I submitted 14 contest logs and started posting reasonable scores (for a rookie)
In 2006 I drove 800 miles round trip for a CQP County expedition. I'm up to a dozen contests this year and the season is young.
I'm hooked on this contesting thing.
BTW - What is VHF? ;-)
Thanks to diehard contesters such as N6KI and WN6K for getting me started.
73
de AD6ZJ, Loren
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High QSO Totals Offer Insight
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by N1UR on October 17, 2006
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Thanks for this great article Ken. I agree, by any measure, you can conclude that HF DX Contesting Worldwide is healthy. Growing? Probably, but certainly not in its demise as many have claimed.
I think that domestic HF contesting is a different story, whether HF or VHF. It would be interesting to see the unique calls data with some attempt to scrub for obvious typos to get a sense for the number of people inspired to get on a radio and "make a couple of Qs".
Kind of wish my stock portfolio had as "bad" numbers as the ones on your chart...hi, hi.
Ed N1UR
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High QSO Totals Offer Insight
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by w4kaz on October 18, 2006
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Here's an idea for a possibly interesting graphic on the US ham population. How about a histogram showing the ARRL Sweepstakes "year licensed" check being handed out by contest participants. (i.e., 50 entrants 'first licensed' in 1965, 55 in 1966, etc.)
If the peaks of the curves, plotted over time, generally move forward along with the passing years, the US ham contesting population could be considered "stable".
If the curve peaks get stuck on some year in the past, or progress forward more slowly than the time scale(one year), you can presume that the population is aging. We would be saddened to know that our friends are soon to fall off the left of the curve.....
If the curve peaks move forward faster than the time scale, we are picking up new blood, and should rejoice at the new friends we are gaining.
I hope its the latter.
I know the 'first licensed' check is fairly casual regarding accuracy, but its probably close enough for most single ops to use as a guesstimate.
73,
Keith, W4KAZ
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by w4kaz on November 3, 2006
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Addendum:
Woops. Looks like what I outlined above was done back in 2002 by Bill, N6ZFO. See
http://www.nccc.cc/jug/jug02mar.pdf
w4kaz
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by G8UBJ on November 6, 2006
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I'm not a serious contester but it was interesting to
see the ages during the JARTS RTTY contest (Exchange is RST + Age)
Few peopple I worked were younger than me! I'm 45 and
in RTTY terms look like a youngster. I worked a few 30 year olds but I only worked one station below 30! (An infant DL at the tender age of 28 years old!).
Like most I started RTTY with a homebrew TU and mechanical monster. I was about 18 Years old�
I know there's a lot of contest activity on RTTY at the moment, but are contesters getting older or do all the foundation/novices go for PSK or something else?
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High QSO Totals Offer Insight
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by kr2q on November 11, 2006
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Interesting topic which, as pointed out, has been beaten to death, but is always interesting, none-the-less.
Here is my critique (or comments)....
The real question is how to measure the vitality of contesting (again, as was pointed out). There are several approaches: Score, QSO's, log submissions, etc.
As an analogy, how would you meausure the vitality of your local HS Track program...by the number of track team members? By the number of meets? By the number of points accumulated (wins, etc)? Or how about by the number of spectators? Certainly, for an event such as NASCAR, the number of spectators is important.
Well, I think that contesting is somewhat unique in that the "spectators" (casual ops) actually contribute to all of the "measures of success." Should those "spectators" be counted as part of the vitality of contesting? Cleary (at least to me), the sun spot cycle will have a dramatic impact on the number of casual ops who "make some qso's" and hence impact the score of others.
Yes, submitting a log is REAL EASY now, so counting log submissions certainly does has its own issues.
My suggestion:
Look at the Multi-multis (say, to top 10). These are the die-hards of contesting. They absolutely work everything possible everywhere. They do not have to factor in "when will the MUF shift so I should change my run band" sort of thinking that single ops do. They work every other "serious" contester on the air AND they vacuum up every casual op there is by (a) being on the band all of the time and (b) being the loudest signal on the band (and hence very enticing for the casual guy - an "easy" qso).
Track the M/M critical-to-success factors and overlay it on the sunspot cycle. Track: total number of qsos; total number of mults; total score.
This information is available (at least for CQWWDX) since the beginning. I feel that this would be the best indicator of contest health and trends (allowing for the 11 year cycle).
Of course, it works best for contests that have a M/M category. :-)
de Doug KR2Q
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by ve6ex on November 23, 2006
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Interesting read. The lines/coloured would do better if they were initialed (what did you do with the RAC). It's a lot like reading n1mm bandmap when it's full.
I think addressing/fixing the *turnoffs* would be more to the point. We got dumped in the mags for el'cheepo ads. We get qrmed attacked/harassed and are bound to turn to whatever the rest of the whiners want because we are having fun.
We have to build a structure in contesting that will at least make the beginner feel that they can compete in a class as a beginner and advance accordingly to the top gear/scores. These couloured?? lines to me represent the growth of big gun stations and bigtime efforts that show good in coloured pictures on the front of the radio ads/ cn8ww doing 85 million in mm etc.
Cheers, Dan...
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by ae7dx on November 24, 2006
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I was just going over some of the checks received in the 2006 CW SS and had a couple of thoughts: 1) The SSB SS will probably result in more recent checks, and 2) I was mostly search and pounce working running stations which I would expect to have older checks. Perhaps studying the log from a station that was primarily running would give a better perspective.
My results (missing years were zero count): 02-2, 00-2, 98-1, 97-2, 96-1, 92-1, 91-1, 90-3, 89-1, 88-1, 85-1, 84-2, 82-2, 81-1, 80-1, 79-4, 78-3, 77-9, 76-6, 75-8, 74-5, 73-6, 72-19, 71-8, 70-6, 69-13, 68-10, 67-4, 66-3, 65-13, 64-6, 63-4, 62-14, 61-6, 60-6, 59-10, 58-20, 57-12, 56-9, 55-10, 54-7, 53-7, 52-3, 51-2, 49-1, 48-3, 24-1 (W6YX), 09-1 (W1MX)
FWIW...SSB counts to come...when I have time...
Jack, NA7RF (CK 57)
(ex AE7DX...operating as K1CD on Sunday in the SSB SS)
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