The news that ARRL has abolished the August UHF Contest
hit me really hard. For me, it was like having someone kill your
baby.
I was the one who first proposed having a UHF contest when I
was chairman of the ARRL Contest Advisory Committee in 1977.
I wrote the original draft of the rules. I had the top single operator
score in the first two UHF contests (in 1978 and 1979), operating
on Mt. Pinos, California. We still have good participation in
the UHF contest in Southern California almost every year.
This decision is really unfortunate, in my view. It comes at a time
when overall participation has been rising for several years, as
documented in K9JK's excellent contest wrap-up articles. Even if
a new UHF contest is created and held on the weekend before
Mother's Day as has been proposed, it won't be the same.
To fill the void on Aug. 6-7, 2016 (the dates that ARRL announced
for this year's UHF contest before deciding to kill the contest),
perhaps we can hold the contest as scheduled, even without
ARRL sponsorship.
How about if some of the leading VHF clubs band together to
co-sponsor the 2016 August UHF Contest? I, for one, would be
willing to help. We could publicize the event through the contest
calendar and club websites, collect the logs at a central point,
then simultaneously publish the results on several club websites.
I already publish the rules, forms and results of the SBMS 2.3
GHz and Up Contest on www.n6nb.com. That contest would
probably fade away if ARRL takes over its dates (the weekend
before Mother's Day) for a new UHF contest.
If we start with the groups that are already working together to
co-sponsor the VHF Superconference (NEWS, Mt. Airy, the K8GP
team and SEVHF), and add the Central States VHF Society,
the Pacific Northwest VHF society, Northern Lights, plus maybe
NTMS, SBMS and a few others, we'd have a critical mass to pull this
off. Anyone interested?
Long live the August UHF Contest!
73, Wayne Overbeck, N6NB
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