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Re: [CQ-Contest] Observations of a young ham

To: cq-contest@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Observations of a young ham
From: Richard F DiDonna NN3W <richnn3w@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2016 17:49:38 -0500
List-post: <cq-contest@contesting.com">mailto:cq-contest@contesting.com>
I tend to agree with a lot of what Ken has to say. Like Ken, I'm in my early 40s - but was licensed since I was 13.

Contesting to me has very little to do with "gaming". My son does a lot of gaming and the parallels simply aren't there. Most games are limited duration events (maybe an hour at very most, but often 20 minutes), have a set goal or target, and often involve a small team. You see this in Call of Duty, Destiny, the Division, and other games.

To me, contesting is much more akin to "competitive" running. You have contests of varying lengths - akin to 5Ks, 10Ks, 10 milers, half marathons, marathons etc. Almost nobody is going to win a 10K the first time they slap on a pair of ASICS and mot people are never going to take the pole position in a race. In events like the local elementary school 5K (akin to NAQP or a state QSO party), a big goal would be to win your age/sex bracket. To win a 10K or a half marathon, takes real ability, real training, and real drive. Some folks (like me) will likely never win a running race, but then again I don't expect to. What I expect to do is improve my run time - place in a certain level in my grouping and finish the damned race.

First time I did a 5K, I simply wanted to finish, to run in less than 30 minutes, and not embarrass myself. I succeed on all three goals. I was nearly 12 minutes slower than the fastest 5K time, but I had no belief I would win. Same with my first 10K: simply finish, run the 10K in less than 60 minutes, and not embarrass myself. I succeeded here again.

Just with contesting, you're not going to win the first time. But, now and again, you may surprise yourself. From my little home QTH which features a homebrew yagi dangling from a tree and two fan dipoles, I managed to win SOHP-mixed mode in the ARRL 10 for all of Virginia. Quite satisfying for that to happen. I'd consider ARRL 10 akin to a 10K and to have won my bracket was a great feat - something I'd want to repeat.

If you take the mindset that you're not going to win right out of the gate and that you need to hone your skills, contesters too can enjoy the sport.

73 Rich NN3W


On 12/19/2016 4:25 PM, Kenneth E. Harker wrote:
      Here is my perspective.  For background, I was first licensed at age 20 while attending 
college and I’m now 44.  In addition to HF and VHF contesting, I am active in 
IARU-style Amateur Radio Direction Finding, and have competed as a member of team USA at 
three ARDF World Championships.  Not all sports are head-to-head.  As others have mentioned, 
HF contesting (and ARDF) are both more in the style of races - albeit races in which you have 
to perform certain tasks between the start and the finish.  They allow you to take pride in 
beating your own personal times/scores, in going head-to-head against a particular 
rival/friend, or in winning an age/gender or transmitter/power category or the overall 
competition.  There are plenty of youth interested in track and field, orienteering, 
swimming, etc.  I’m not sure why we need to market/benchmark ourselves against 
e-sports all the time.

     Cost of entry can certainly be an inhibitor, even if many of us can think of ways 
to get around it.  We know that you can do well with more modest stations in the right 
contest for your location.  We know you can buy almost everything you need used, or 
even borrow more expensive components for a while.  We know that most super-station 
owners are not contesting 52 weekends a year and are often happy to host guest 
operators from time to time.  But I can easily see newcomers or would-be contesters 
might feel the cost of entry is daunting because they don’t know these things.  
That said, many other sports have reasonably-high costs of entry, too - ever priced 
how much it would cost to get into ice hockey?  Or take up rally car driving?

      But what I think the attraction to contesting really boils down to is whether or not you are interested in 
the science of radio.  If your primary interest is competition - there’s COD or CS or Halo for a fraction 
of the cost.  If you’re interested in collecting things - pokemon can fill that interest as well as QSL 
cards.  If you are interested in building things, well there’s all manner of other hobbies where you can 
assemble computers, drones, minecraft castles, competitive holiday light displays, etc.  What sets contesting 
apart, really, is learning about the science of radio - propagation, communications techniques, antenna patterns, 
figuring out how to understand foreign accents, etc.  If that sort of thing doesn’t appeal to you, then 
you’re probably not a great candidate for contesting and there are many alternatives out there for the 
non-radio enthusiast.  Contesting is a sport for people who love radio.

      On a related topic, maybe we should also be trying to understand why contesting 
is not more attractive to women.  The percentage of women getting science and 
technology degrees in universities (at least in the U.S.) has been increasing 
significantly in the past 10 years.  Women now account for 20% of all undergraduate 
engineering science degrees in the United States and 40% of all physics and 
mathematics degrees.  But for a technical hobby that would seem to draw heavily from 
people in those fields, contesting in particular does an abysmal job in attracting 
women.  At most ARDF events, I can expect 25% to 35% of the competitors to be women.  
That’s an order of magnitude better representation than in contesting.  My 
guess is that more women in contesting would naturally attract more youth in 
contesting as well.

73 de WM5R

On Dec 18, 2016, at 11:42 AM, W0MU Mike Fatchett <w0mu@w0mu.com> wrote:

I had the opportunity to talk to my son in more detail and ask him why 
contesting does not interest him.  Here is what we discussed.

1.  Cost to get in the game and have a chance to win is prohibitive.  You need 
a great station, land, etc to really win or compete.  The playing field is so 
unbalanced that it becomes a show stopper.  For him he has no costs when at 
home.  I consider my station modest with a 70 ft tower and land to put up Inv 
L's and full sized 80m verticals and some receiving antennas.  I could do more 
but we have horses and they need to roam and are hell on things in the pasture.

2. You have to invest a lot of time to get good.  If he can not have a really 
good station then why invest the time to get good if you are not going to be 
able to really compete.

2. The tools we use to contest, logging software, packet look like old dos 
programs.  He called them ugly and boring.  He is used to amazing graphics in 
games.  I found this observation interesting.  I feel that the tools we have 
are pretty good and give me what I want to see readily available.  I was not 
expecting this answer.

3. He is far more interested in using packet where he can immediately chase 
things.  Packet essentially gives him a list of things to do or goals.  It is 
more visual so more interesting.  He thought that more automated systems would 
be interesting.  Young people and even us older folk expect things to happen 
much faster.  They are the generation of instant satisfaction and some of that 
even rubs off on us older folk.

4.  Talking to someone over the airwaves is still pretty cool. You can 
instantly talk around the world if the right condx exist, but we can talk all 
over the world with our phones so it is not as amazing as it once was.

5. CW is interesting but he was surprised that we don't have better code 
readers.  While he would like to learn the code time is once again the factor.  
They have so many other outlets for entertainment that it is hard to find time 
for all of them.

6.  Results take far too long to come out

7.  He proposed that all participants use a scoreboard type system.  Many of us 
have said this was something we need to do but have instead met with amazing 
resistance and a ton of excuses why people refuse to use it.  A system where 
everyone can check it out and see what is going in in the contest.  We are back 
to visuals.

6. Playing radio in the car driving is fun because there is not much else to do 
but drive.

7. He has his general license but he does not have the technical skills or 
electronic knowledge to build a shack or decent station.  I am not a great 
teacher especially to my own kids so I take some of the blame for this but it 
is hard to teach people things when they don't want to devote much time to it.  
I feel a reluctance to even try to do something without having the proper 
knowledge.  A far cry from when I was young and tried all sorts of silly 
antennas and projects that mostly failed miserably but boy did I learn from 
those mistakes.

That pretty much summed up our hour long conversation and I am no closer to 
figuring out how to sell ham radio and contesting to them.  I hope some will 
find this information helpful and interesting.

W0MU






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