Hi All..this FD discussion has set off a few alarm bells in my mind. I think
we have focused too narrowly on using FD as an entry point for contesting. I
know we are all about contesting on this reflector, but we might be more
concerned with getting some of our "shack on a hip" cousins to becmoe
interested in the joys of HF operating before trying to snag them into the
contesting world.
This past weekend at N8BC ( a general purpose club with 100+ members) our
biggest draw was the steak dinner hosted by contester W8GN. I think we may
have had less than 30 actual members visit our FD site and probably not more
than 20 of those actually sat down at any operating position. We evidently
did not do much of a job of PR within our own group to have them see the fun
that could be had during FD.
In addition to this I was sadly told by one visitor that a club that I cut my
FD teeth on many moons ago has abandoned FD efforts totally due to the
increasing age of it's membership. Add to that another local club (I was
visiting to give a WRTC presentation) in June could not get two members ( out
of 25 in attendance) interested in a FD effort this year.
Are these isolated incidents or are others seeing anything that resembles
these problems? I'm concerned about the implications of these events.
Ron, K8NZ/S526O
--
CQ-Contest on WWW: http://lists.contesting.com/_cq-contest/
Administrative requests: cq-contest-REQUEST@contesting.com
|