Has contesting helped or hurt ham radio?

Growing up in ham radio during the 60's/70's There was not so much contesting as the last 20 years. It got to be every weekend was a contest going on. No room for just rag chewing. Now we have digital modes were a "contact" is less than a second. I think ham radio peaked in the 50's with all the WWII surplus for sale. As the surplus dried up fewer people took up the hobby and we started a slow decline. In a panic The powers that be started having contest and paper collecting. But it took over the hobby (one reason that VHF/UHF is still hot). What do the rest of you say?

Meh. It's something to appeal to our competitive nature. Take it or leave I say.
The only time I take issue with it is when someone doesn't understand that it may not be another's "thing." Then we're talking about different issues of a more personal nature.

That is kind of my point. With the competition to be top dog we have lost most of the Elmers, friendly clubs. I remember all the MARS phone calls to Arizona during Vietnam. Can't do that now with all the contesters wanting that frequency. Young one coming up in the ranks only know of contesting. We did have worked all states/100 countries ect but now it is worked all counties that have a Federal parks with a butterfly in them on a weekend.

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Originally Posted by AA1OH

That is kind of my point. With the competition to be top dog we have lost most of the Elmers, friendly clubs. I remember all the MARS phone calls to Arizona during Vietnam. Can't do that now with all the contesters wanting that frequency. Young one coming up in the ranks only know of contesting. We did have worked all states/100 countries ect but now it is worked all counties that have a Federal parks with a butterfly in them on a weekend.

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Yea, maybe there is a "contest every weekend." Most of the contests throughout the year are of short duration and do not take up the entire weekend. Except for Field Day and the 10m contest and maybe a few others that I can't think of right now, most contests are usually only one mode for that weekend.

Since when was the National Parks on the air, that was LAST YEAR, a "contest?" Worked all counties has been in existence since at least the 1970s, and to the best of my knowledge, is basically on 20 meters, and is based around one "net" frequency.

When a contest ends, do you immediately jump on the band and have your QSO? Or are you complaining the next day that "the bands are dead?"

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Yup.

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Originally Posted by AA1OH

Growing up in ham radio during the 60's/70's There was not so much contesting as the last 20 years. It got to be every weekend was a contest going on. No room for just rag chewing. Now we have digital modes were a "contact" is less than a second. I think ham radio peaked in the 50's with all the WWII surplus for sale. As the surplus dried up fewer people took up the hobby and we started a slow decline. In a panic The powers that be started having contest and paper collecting. But it took over the hobby (one reason that VHF/UHF is still hot). What do the rest of you say?

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There is more contesting because there are more Amateurs on HF, domestically and worldwide, than there were in the 1960's.

Few contests take up all HF bands and all modes during a contest. Most major contests (Field Day, which is not strictly a contest, being an exception for one) only operate on one mode at a time. The WARC bands do not have contests.

That there is no room for ragchewing, for the most part, is bunk, a canard, a strawman argument without merit. Yes, there are a few rude people, who happen to be in a contest, who will stomp all over a net or a ragchew to get a frequency... they'd do the same thing if there was no contest on, but they believe they are more important than everyone else. That is not a problem of the contests, but of the id and ego of the induhvidual operator(s) involved.

Contests and paper chasing have grown because interest in them has grown. This is not something that the alleged "powers that be" ordained. It simply happened as Amateur Radio has evolved.

Surplus is still available, if you know where to look.

And... this is nothing new. I heard the same nonsense back when I was a Novice just learning, from the OT's who sat in the back of the meeting room, sipped their beers, kvetching long and loud about The Good Old Days and how they did things when you had to walk 12 miles, uphill, barefoot, in 4 feet of heavy snow, both ways. This was during the heyday of the Livingston (NJ) ARC W2MO (since reassigned since the club is gone)… in 1972.

160 is hopping right now. Why not work a few?

Boy, that's a fair collection of sig lines I've seen previously here and there including Hamsexy before it fell into disrepair. (;->) Right, no contests on the WARC bands, places of refuge from the madness if you have antennas for it. Then there are 2M and 70cM, but if the dead repeater trend continued (I'm sans antennas now) you need some hellified Yagis. Heh, I remember Al W2NCH pre Sandy with a 90ft tower supporting a 22el 2M H stack. I QSOed with him from my VXAmobile at a distance of 130mi 5&9 and he didn't have his KW Class C amp on.

Contesters took over a MARS frequency? I wasn't licensed during Vietnam, nor was I living in Aridzona, but I was during Desert Storm and as I remember phone patching at the all Collins station at Fort Monmouth, NJ we operated on Army MARS frequencies outside the Amateur bands.

"That is not a problem of the contests, but of the id and ego of the induhvidual operator(s) involved.
It was pretty much the same on Altair IV when Dr. Morbius with his enhanced IQ unknowingly reawakened what had destroyed the Krell at the height of their civilization, monsters, monsters from the id!

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I just rediscovered PSK31. On 30M, of all places.

Those QSOs will likely NEVER be disrupted by contest activity. Ditto, the other bands and modes where a contest isn't en vogue on a given weekend.

I personally like working WPX and similar to pick up countries I don't have - or get a new/prospective ham behind the mic and let them have fun snagging a few.

I'm a hypocrite....

Generally speaking I avoid contests. the WARC bands are good friends of mine.

That changes on Winter Field Day, Field Day, and the Michigan QSO party.

So I'm off to Winter Field day, 736r in hand.

Winter Field Day? That's fine for polar bears, I much prefer the summer event. After helping set up I'd hang around stuffing my face, the Piscataway or Catpisaway if you prefer, NJ club had a member who was a professional cook who dragged in his commercial stove jetted for propane. Let me tell you, we ate GOOD! When most got tired and went to sleep I loved the overnight goofing around on 75M phone. Everybody was slap happy, it was a party on the air. I looked on it as practice operating under emergency/disaster conditions and said so, explaining the event to a reporter for the local newspaper after having my picture taken with another ham raising the 10M vertical, a re-tuned CB antenna I donated to the club. That went unnoticed as we were focused on the job at hand, when I was shown the article with me quoted word for word and saw the picture, it was remarkably quite similar to the flag raising on Iwo Jima. Well, that was my 15 minutes of fame, but the point is no mention of the contest aspect was made. Why spoil what hams are famous for?

the only thing that makes me lol about contesting is when they call it radiosport

Radiosport? THIS is radiosport, THIS is a contest, this is a shootout with a blowout! Unfortunately video stored on a computer can't be posted, so I grabbed a frame from a video in my arcs 'n sparks folder that is the cut to the chase version of a long wait for the action one. You wouldn't want the URL and sit through several minutes of nothing only to see a few seconds of arcs dancing from antenna to antenna.

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Originally Posted by n6hcm

the only thing that makes me lol about contesting is when they call it radiosport

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obviously you have zero idea

https://www.amazon.com/Contact-Sport...dio+sport+book

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Originally Posted by kb2vxa

Radiosport? THIS is radiosport, THIS is a contest, this is a shootout with a blowout! Unfortunately video stored on a computer can't be posted, so I grabbed a frame from a video in my arcs 'n sparks folder that is the cut to the chase version of a long wait for the action one. You wouldn't want the URL and sit through several minutes of nothing only to see a few seconds of arcs dancing from antenna to antenna.

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There's a lot of brain damage in that crowd...

A little off topic but competition of even the most mundane things is just part of the human condition. I mean, what if people who switched to electronic cigarettes held competitions to see who could produce the biggest plumes of vapor or do tricks?
Oh wait ....... they do that.

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Human nature being the way it is, contributes to the phrase "Hold my beer and watch this" being uttered from sea to shining sea. In the case of the shining sea on my side of things, that would be from Fukishima.

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Originally Posted by WZ7U

Human nature being the way it is, contributes to the phrase "Hold my beer and watch this" being uttered from sea to shining sea. In the case of the shining sea on my side of things, that would be from Fukishima.

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The solution to pollution is dilution ...

Not in the case of radioactive water still being released by the Fukiyou disaster, look at those colors. Cherrynoble was bad, but a few men sacrificed their lives to cap off the reactor, Fukiyou is too near the ocean and too hot for anybody to get near. Nobody has any idea where this is going.

Backing up a bit, those two and others are too dumb to quit smoking before it kills them. Nicotine is a deadly poison no matter the delivery system. Like me they didn't listen to their bodies telling them not to breathe smoke, but they forced them into submission.

"There's a lot of brain damage in that crowd... "
There was a lot of brain damage before they gathered in that parking lot. You don't need boxes full of "pills" pushing horribly distorted kilowatts into a phased "Rod Of God" array to be heard on the other side of the parking lot, especially when delay lines are mismatched puttin high RF voltage at the base of the antennas. Last night I watched a Firestick matching transformer go up in flames for the same reason. CB was my stepping stone to Amateur Radio, especially experimenting with various antenna designs, I learned, they didn't.

Radio sport, isn't that a fox hunt?

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Originally Posted by AA1OH

Radio sport, isn't that a fox hunt?

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That's how I read it.

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Originally Posted by N2SR

obviously you have zero idea

https://www.amazon.com/Contact-Sport...dio+sport+book

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actually, i have the book ...

"Radio sport, isn't that a fox hunt?
That's how I read it. "
YOIKS! After The Fox was a 1966 Peter Sellers movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060200/

All kidding aside, the club that gave my VE test got me into fox hunting on 2M where I learned the tricks all but one I taught them. Using multi-path propagation to send the hounds off chasing a large wild bird, and sitting in a tall parking garage that REALLY outfoxed them, when they got close the fox was EVERYWHERE. Remembering how I laid the loop on its side and found music on CB coming from a Mosley tribander on a tower in a forest of CB antennas, the VXAmobile went to the top floor of the parking garage and caught the fox.That experience came in handy a few years later at another club with "Doppler radar" DF. I figured our repeater jammer was up in the mountains near the repeater with an HT throttled back to 1W. I was reminded of that trick, I remembered the story of The Laughing Policeman repeater jammer in the UK. That's as far as we got with it for the longest time, meanwhile Jim N2EIY and I baited him, another non member joined in and we really had him going... to no avail. Then the axe fell, we were sending logs and tapes to the FCC (pre Riley) via the club president, but something smelled fishy. The VP called the FCC Chief Council of the Enforcement Division, he wondered why we weren't sending what we promised... AHAAA!!! We had him dead to rights, we kept the whole thing start to finish under wraps, he knew it when he got the official warning letter, he slinked off with his tail between his legs and disappeared.

He was a psychology professor at Rutgers, New Brunswick, NJ Campus, A few weeks later we learned what it was all about, one of his students told us it was an experiment in behavioral psychology! WTF???!!! Nobody could understand what was going on in his warped mind, like the famous Stanford prison experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanfo...son_experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=760lwYmpXbc The PROPER way of doing it is with student volunteers who know what's going on and can directly benefit from it. YOU DO >>>NOT<<< SUBJECT A BUNCH OF UNKNOWING HAMS TO DR. FRANKENSTEIN MIND BLOWING EXPERIMENTS AND PLAY THEM LIKE THE VILLAGERS AND THEIR FAMILIES!!! Remember the torchlight parade at the end that trapped Dr. Frankenstein and his pet monster in the old windmill and set it afire? That's what we did with OUR Dr. Frankenstein, we burned his ass!