Gene - Thanks for the kind comments on the data. I have included some more in
this post, incorporating your % of max participation.
Looking at The January contest is interesting in that it was the first VHF
contest, followed by the September and June contest. Of even more interest is
the fact that activity in the January VHF contest peaked in 1961. There have
been local peaks since then, the most recent in 1996 as you point out.
Here is a table with the activity for all the ARRL VHF contests, with a
percentage of the mid 90s max, 1996 for January and June, 1997 for September.
While the January and September contests show the trend you note, that is that
activity has been more or less constant in this decade and down from the mid
90s peak, the June contest has shown significant growth over the decade and is
higher than the mid 90s peak. In fact the 2006, 2008, and 2009 contests set all
time highs for entries in the June contest.
Table - VHF Contest Activity since Rover Class was introduced in 1991
Year Jan %1996 June %1996 Sept %1997
2010 759 62 NA NA NA NA
2009 649 53 1136 123 594 79
2008 709 58 1074 116 482 64
2007 778 64 860 93 561 75
2006 793 65 1047 113 531 71
2005 712 58 840 91 629 84
2004 834 68 766 83 558 74
2003 798 65 818 89 520 69
2002 802 66 672 73 535 71
2001 790 65 680 74 553 74
2000 820 67 749 81 583 78
1999 966 79 701 76 606 81
1998 1075 88 865 94 617 82
1997 1182 97 837 91 751 100
1996 1219 100 923 100 700 93
1995 1171 96 837 91 686 91
1994 1013 83 781 85 687 91
1993 1036 85 818 89 621 83
1992 958 77 840 91 591 79
1991 710 77 415 55
Why is the June contest healthy and the January and September contests pretty
much holding their own? As you note, I suspect that the presence of those HF
rigs with 6M introduced in the last decade coupled with lots of E-Skip and
hence lots of activity in June have a lot to do with that. The FFMA supplying
another award to chase is certainly another. It is all easier to grasp if you
cut this table out and paste it into a spreadsheet and graph it.
W9KGA is probably the guy who should be doing this analysis, he has a much
better understanding of the ebbs and flows of VHF contesting activity since its
inception than I have.
I agree with you that VHF contesting needs to be made more attractive and to do
this, as you say, we need to find a way for the guy with a limited station to
have fun and rack up a reasonable score. How do you propose we accomplish this?
- Duffey
--
KK6MC
James Duffey
Cedar Crest NM
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