While pulling together some statistics for another purpose, I came up with
the following that may shed some light on the issue of new blood in
contesting.
>From January 1, 1995 through the end of 2001, I made 36,416 DX (non-W)
QSOs, of which 30,513 were on CW. Of these, 23,260 (63.9 percent) were
unique (I had never worked that station before on that band/mode
combination). In 2001, I had 7731 QSOs, of which 4630 (59.9 percent) were
"unique." In 1998, my first year of really high volume (for me), the
corresponding percentage was 56.5!
What this seems to say is that the pool of people to work out there in
DX-land is larger and deeper than we sometimes think. After 5 years and
36,000 DX QSOs, the chances are better than even that the next guy I work
will be someone I've never encountered on that band and mode before!
It would be interesting to know -- as the log checkers presumably do --
just how many call-signs show up in a typical CQWW.
73, Pete N4ZR
Sometimes a tower is
just a tower
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