Contesters are Radio Active

Over breakfast this morning, I was reviewing the March issue of QST. In it, Carl, K9LA, was reviewing the 2007 IARU contest held last July.

What was interesting to me was that, in spite of being at the bottom of the sunspot cycle and being the middle of summer, participation in the contest was at a record level of logs received (3200). That was up some 5% over the last record year of 2005.

Now, there are those out there that don’t like all of the contests on the bands because it makes the bands very crowded and there is lots of activity. I can understand that.

On the other hand, contesting makes the bands very crowded and there is lots of activity — precisely what we should be showing to outsiders that crave our frequency allocations.

Contesters, in short, are radio active. Perhaps far more active than the rest of the amateur population (no statistics on that, just a gut feel).

For those who want to avoid the activity, contests are published and have a schedule. If you want to operate phone and there’s a CW contest on, you’re good to go. And the WARC bands do not have contests and this is a great practice. You can operate here with some very great propagation.

Record breaking participation? I’ll take radio active all the time.

Scot, K9JY

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