I agree that there should be a way to avoid the expense of printing and
sending unwanted certificates and/or plaques. As a moderately active VHF
contester, I have received a certificate from ARRL for "First Place - Ohio
Section - 1296 MHZ" - having made three qsos in one grid.
With most certificates, I check to see that the sponsor has not included a
gift certificate (still hasn't happened :) ) or some other cool thing, and
then send it to the circular file.
In the case of ARRL, I'd much rather see that money spent fighting RFI or
securing new frequency allocations at a future WARC.
Separate Cabrillo choices for certificates and plaques would be best. Until
then I would think a frequent contest sponsor such as ARRL might be able
to keep on file a list of those who did not wish to receive certificates.
73 - Jim K8MR
In a message dated 11/15/2012 10:06:26 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
k5zd@charter.net writes:
Brian,
You are right that it is expensive to print and mail certificates to
thousands of people per contest. However, it is worth it when we get
excited emails from new contesters happy to have won their first award. I
think we can all remember getting our first few certificates and hanging
them proudly on the wall. Hard for a pdf file to match that!
We have discussed providing a way for contest participants to opt out of
receiving a certificate. Perhaps they have a box of them or just don't
want
to cause us the expense.
The logical place to do this is by a new field in the Cabrillo file. So
far, the people who maintain the Cabrillo file "standard" have not been
interested in adding a new tag. Perhaps some more support would encourage
them to change their mind.
Should there be one new tag that says "don't send certificates or plaques
or
anything"? Or should be there be two? One for no certificates and another
for no plaques/awards? Or could it be as simple as a convention that says
if there is no address provided then don't send anything?
73
Randy, K5ZD
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