October 2009

From the feed back I've received seems most everyone enjoyed the annual meeting and I had a good time visiting everyone. However, just like a contest, just never enough time to visit with everyone.

One question did come up during the meeting concerning the contests in the team competition. The person asking the question notice there were more ARRL contests than CQ contests in the team competition and was wondering why. The discussion quickly changed to many suggestions of changes to the team competition. These suggestions were noted to be reviewed later by the Board for possible future changes.

As promised the discussion was shared with the Board members who could not be in attendance. The Board did feel that now was not the time to make changes, with the team competition just starting with the new season. The Board will continue to monitor the competition to see if changes are warranted during a off season (summer) in the future.

Now back to the original question, how did we end up with the various contests that currently make up the team competition?

Many years ago when the team competition first started it was only 2 teams and it was only for Sweepstakes. At the time MWA was focused only on SS and the team competition was started to help increase MWA's club score in SS. This proved to be successful. The club started to grow and started to be noticed in the contesting community.

As the club grew the number of MWA entries started to approached the Unlimited club category. At some point we decided to take a shot at the Unlimited Category and to further our growth by encouraging operation in the major DX contests. So we added ARRL DX and CQ WW to the team competition. About this time we also determined that contests part of the team competition must have a club competition and the contest must be significant on national or international level.

I don't remember why ARRL 10 Meter and ARRL 160 Meter were added to the competition. However, I do remember that for some time one of our MWA members was responsible for the 160 meter write-ups. This individual strongly urged MWA to become a significant player in the 160 meter contest as there was an opportunity that we could take the gavel. As a result of that encouragement, MWA has done very well in the 160 meter contest. This also may have had something to do with why they are included in the team competition.

The Minnesota QSO Party was added since MWA sponsors the QSO Party and we wanted to encourage in state activity in that contest.

The ARRL RTTY Roundup was added as we started to see interest within MWA in RTTY with several members active in this contest. Again, this was a contest that had very limit club competition taking place so it appeared ripe for a club to come in and do very well, which we have done.

The last contest to be add was CQ WW RTTY. This contest we discuss over 2 or 3 years before finally adding it. A few of the reasons to add this contest include adding that balance between ARRL and CQ contests, filling out the modes in CQ WW, and also another contest that MWA can score very well in.

When the Board added the last two RTTY contests our discussion about why or why not covered many areas. First of which was mentioned earlier, the contest must have a club competition and must be a national or international level event.

In the discussion we spent a great deal of time trying to determine at what number are there too many contests in the team competition? While we like to encourage contest activity we also need to allow people to strike a balance with home life, i.e. not use too many kitchen passes. While several of our members take great pride in working almost all the contests part of the team competition, we also need to make sure people understand that it is okay to operate only a few contests in the competition. After all there are many other contests a person could participate in, such as the many state QSO parties.

Looking at the team competition as to the number of contests, from CQ WW Phone to ARRL DX Phone, there are 10 contests in 18 - 19 weekends. That's 50% of the weekends tied up with the team competition in a 4 month period. Notice this period also include three important holidays, Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Years. Plus if you look at participation in ARRL DX contest from MWA, we do see it drop off for those last two contests.

Hopefully the above gives you a better understanding on the decisions involved in trying to add another contest to the team competition. I also hope that you do not feel that we will not add more contests in the future. In the future there may be some very good reasons to add a contest as we are always looking for ways to encourage activity.

I appreciate the question and opportunity to explain the process behind the team competition and some of the inner workings of the club. Your feedback and questions will help make the club stronger and better in the future.

Sounds like there was a lot of activity in CQ WW RTTY by MWA. Way to go everyone. Unfortunately I was not able to be on due a couple of commitments that weekend. Now it is time to get ready of the next big test, CQ WW Phone. I'm planning to operate from the Farm this year. I have some commitments around that weekend that operating the lighter schedule at W0AIH makes it easier for me to meet those commitments.

Good luck everyone and hope to hear you on the air.

Bill, AC0W