It has now been 10 years since the US went code-free and ham radio license
numbers are at ALL TIME highs - 750K total, half are general and extra that
have HF privileges. 30K new techs a year, 10K upgrades a year from tech to
general/extra. The problem for CW contesting is the number of hams that can
copy code at 20+ WPM is decreasing and will continue to do so. New hams are
on SSB/FM/digital. Look at the FT8 band segments on a bandscope. Look at the
QSO totals in the RTTY contests. Read QST. And MOST importantly look at the
checks in the last SS.
Looking at the number of submitted logs for a contest doesn't indicate how
the contest is doing, because it is now so easy to submit a log via web page
copy and paste. A good indication is for all the ops that put in 22+ hours
last weekend to ask themselves if they HAD fun and if they look forward to
putting in 22+ hours next year? Did they feel like they couldn't wait for it
to end? Were they squirming in their chair the last few hours?
The only significant major contest scoring change I can think of in the last
45 years is WPX getting rid of zero point Q's. That's when I started entering
the WPX. There needs to be some changes in the SS for those of us that still
operate CW contests. Only 54 stations reported on 3830 operating 24 hours. In
2010 there were 125 stations. I don't see anything positive in that trend.
73, Bill KO7SS (47 years operating CWSS)
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