Yes, and recruiting operators is a constant challenge for station owners.
CQ WW is probably the only contest for which recruiting isn't a major
headache. That's because it's the King of Contests with the best format, and
winning or doing well carries a lot of prestige. A huge percentage of the
contest community turns out for CQ WW, including many large and expensive
DXpeditions, some of which couldn't be done more than once a year, or once
every few years.
Historically, ARRL DX has been the second most popular contest, but my sense
is that the turnout at multi-op stations is considerably lower. The contest
suffers from its "DX works only W/VE" format. It's still an interesting
challenge for DX stations to work all the section multipliers on every band,
but they don't get the thrill of working stations all over the world. That
tends to reduce the number of DX participants. It also reduces the number of
DXpeditions well below the level of CQ WW. Another factor that hurts
DXpeditions is that proximity to North America is a big advantage. The
single multiplier (all mults are equal) and power number exchange may be
additional reasons why ARRL DX isn't as popular.
The popularity of WPX has grown steadily, and at an accelerated pace over
the past few years (I believe there are some charts showing this on the WPX
website.) I think log submissions for WPX last year exceeded those for ARRL
DX. There's no doubt that participation in WPX is growing: Last year, three
of us beat the previous US record for SOAB HP by a considerable margin, with
the winner working over 1000 prefixes. WPX is lots of fun (one of my
personal favorites), but it's really a run contest. The mults come to you
whether you go looking for them or not, and all mults are of equal value. A
second radio helps the single operator, but more to pad the QSO count than
for finding new mults. For M/M stations, the second radio on each band isn't
nearly as important. I think contest operators get a big charge out of
working new mults, and an even bigger charge for working mults that are hard
to get (something rewarded by CQ WW, but not ARRL DX or WPX.) I think this
has made WPX less attractive for multi operators, and thus recruiting for
the contest is more difficult. But I also think this is changing and more
multis are looking at doing WPX on a regular basis because overall
participation has increased so much. I think you'll see one or more of the
big M/Ms from the USA on in WPX CW because that mode is more popular with
many of the ops. Note that each of these M/Ms is much more motivated to get
on if one or both of the others gets on, so it's a sort of chicken-and-egg
thing.
73, Dick WC1M
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ryan Jairam [mailto:rjairam@gmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 12:32 PM
> To: Luc PY8AZT
> Cc: Contest Reflector
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Where are Big M/M from USA?
>
> Doing a M/M contest is a large undertaking, I think, from station prep
> to self preparation, as a result I don't think some of them will have
> the energy to put a full effort into every contest.
>
> JMHO.
>
>
> 73
> Ryan, N2RJ
>
> On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Luc PY8AZT <py8azt@dxbrasil.net> wrote:
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > Where are the big guns M/M from USA? I missed K1TTT, KC1XX, K3LR,
> > W3LPL among others on WPX SSB.
> >
> > --
> > 73, Luc
> > __
> > ZY7C Team member
> > PT7AG (also PY8AZT, PX8C, ZZ8Z)
> > LABRE, ARRL, Uirapuru DX Club & ADXG & ForDX Member
> > __
> > Participe da Lista DXBrasil: dxbrasil+subscribe@googlegroups.com
> > Website: http://www.dxbrasil.net
> > _______________________________________________
> > CQ-Contest mailing list
> > CQ-Contest@contesting.com
> > http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Ryan A. Jairam,
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