Dave's right about the potential value of encouraging more casual
participants. Just as happened to me 54 years ago, participation for
purposes other than winning a certificate will result in some
percentage catching the bug and becoming competitors.
One thing that would be a big boost to participation by
non-contesters would be to give award credit for contest QSOs that
have been verified (cross-checked) by the log checkers. Surely, it
would be a fairly trivial addition to the log-checking software to
have it generate a separate list of the verified QSOs in some pretty
universal format, which the awards folks could use to grant credit
toward DXCC, WAS, WPX, WAZ or whatever. Talk about quick, low-cost
gratification, obtainable nowhere else but through participation in contests!
I can hear the screams now about diluting the "integrity" of the
awards, but cheating scenarios involving collusion among participants
in a contest to fabricate QSOs are pretty far fetched, and should be
pretty easy to detect. I suppose people might also point to the loss
of revenue by ARRL, particularly for DXCC, but I truly wonder if the
awards program is a profit center for them, or more a question of
loss mitigation.
73, Pete N4ZR
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