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[CQ-Contest] Strengthening Club Activities

To: cq-contest@contesting.com
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Strengthening Club Activities
From: Jim Brown <k9yc@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: k9yc@arrl.net
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2016 12:43:15 -0800
List-post: <cq-contest@contesting.com">mailto:cq-contest@contesting.com>
On Mon,12/19/2016 8:50 AM, Joe wrote:
But other than Field Day, How does one get clubs to try like SS or CQWW?

One of the best ways is to invite another ham, young or old, to join you for a multi-op at your station. Rig a second set of headphones so that they hear what's going on. If they're new to contesting, or relatively green, let them listen to you for a while -- one hour or several, depending on their experience and the flow of the contest. Then turn the mic or key(board) over to them while you listen.

Most clubs that I know of are lucky to even get members to come to a meeting.


Some clubs are better than others in that regard. Two of the best local clubs of which I've been a member hold casual Saturday morning breakfast or coffee sessions. The North Shore Radio Club does a breakfast thing, the Santa Cruz County Radio Club does "CAKE" -- Coffee-Assisted Knowledge Exchange, where the emphasis is on technical discussions of wide range from beginner to advanced. Each attendee is encouraged to bring something to talk about.

K6GHA, K6XX, and I are the contesters who regularly attend (if it isn't during a contest weekend), and there are engineers, both working and retired, from many different fields, all ready and willing to mentor newer, younger hams. K6XX mentored K6GHA, a middle-aged guy whose dad was a ham, and later, a YL high school student. Both have become active contesters, but the YL is now a sophomore in an EE program at UC Santa Cruz.

That North Shore club (northern suburb of Chicago) includes contesters K9OR, KK9H, WW9S, and WA9IVH. http://www.ns9rc.org/ They regularly place near the top of their class in FD, and are SMC members, and have outreach programs for young people. Other members are active in DXing, and in casual DXpeditions. This was my primary club when I lived in Chicago.

Both of these clubs have formal meetings one night a month, always with some kind of program in addition to discussion of club activities. Both clubs have members who could be classified as "shack on the belt" operators, and both operate VHF and UHF repeaters. The Santa Cruz club have a fairly active EMCOMM program -- our local hazards are wildfires and earthquakes, so our members have learned to be prepared.

I'm a member of two other clubs -- the Northern California Contest Club, NCCC, and the Northern California DX Club (in reality, the Silicon Valley DX club), NCDXC. Neither has a particularly good reachout to young hams, but NCDXC members are significant contributors to the financing of major DX operations and are pillars of NCDXF.

NCCC is a wide area club, with members in the 175 mile radius circle that includes Reno, NV, Santa Cruz, CA, and Humboldt Co in CA. Membership in both clubs has gotten greyer, but NCCC has done the better job of recruiting younger (under 40) members from those who work in the SF Bay area (which includes IT and programming folks from Silicon Valley). And because our membership is so spread out geographically, current NCCC leadership has made a serious effort to incorporate the membership of more local clubs -- the Redwood Empire DX Association that's mostly north of San Francisco, the Mother Lode DX and Contest Club in the Sierra Nevada range that lies between CA and NV, and the PL259 group centered in Silicon Valley. We've mostly moved from weekend lunchtime meetings for general membership (making driving easier by avoiding rush hours and making both ways in daylight), and moving the meeting location around so that more distant members can attend at least one or two meetings a year. Every meeting includes at least one serious presentation, and the general membership meetings usually include at least two. Topics are both technical and operational. Meetings are always in a moderately priced restaurant that has a suitable meeting room. Usually we get the room free -- the restaurant sells a lot of meals.

I know that PVRC has been quite successful with a similar structure. I've attended a lunch meeting of the DC guys, and given an RFI talk to a regional dinner meeting.

73, Jim K9YC

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