[CTSARA] NY Times article on CQ

[Hugo W. Catta]

Jon,

While I agree that is human nature to see only and to be biased by what 
interests us more, it is a fact that the data about CW usage in contests 
is really increasing.

CQ Magazine sponsors and manages the largest world wide contests in the 
world: CQ WPX (MArch for SSB and May for CW) and the CQ World Wide DX 
Contest (October for SSB and November for CW).
Field Day is, of course, sponsored and managed by the ARRL.
ALso the International DX Contest (February for CW and MArch for SSB) is 
also sponsored and managed by the ARRL.
All the above mentioned have increased CW participation, not only Field 
Day. Check their results pages.

By the way, CW OPs don't need to be gang-pressed to operate. A very few 
very casual CW OPs may be the exemption, though.

As a note, I just learned that this past February, PJ2T broke the all 
time world record of any CW contest with 10348 QSOs. You need two to 
tango and two to count as a completed QSO.

In conclusion it is safe to believe that it is not a Fib the research of 
CQ Magazine about the subject.
If anything, the downplaying of CW use might be the real Fib.

vy73,

Hugo - AA1XV



On 07/14/2011 09:45 AM, Jon Perelstein wrote:
 > Just be careful with "how many hams are there" statistics -- they are 
some
 > of the so-called "CQ Magazine Big Fibs" ("fib" being a kinder, 
gentler, more
 > politically correct word than "LIE")
 >
 > It's true that 7,000 people got their licenses last year.  That's 
just fact
 > and comes from the FCC database.  But ...
 >
 > 1.  We know that a good portion of that is people who get their ham 
licenses
 > in conjunction with their Red Cross, CERT, etc. emergency services work.
 >   These people are not ham hobbyists in any sense of the word -- they 
don't
 > get on the air, they don't participate in ham events, they don't even 
think
 > of themselves as hams.  In fact, our experience at Red Cross drills 
tells us
 > that many of them don't know which end of an HT to hold.  Red Cross 
claims
 > that as many as 2,000 of those new hams are Red Cross volunteers; reports
 > about CERT indicate that as many as 1,000 of those new hams are CERT
 > volunteers.
 >
 > 2.  We don't know how many hams have left the hobby, either through 
death or
 > lack of interest or ....  The FCC does not purge its database, even for
 > vanity calls.  Thus, I'm two of the nation's more than 700,000 hams 
-- once
 > as KB1QBZ and again as WB2RYV.  Of the five others with whom I took my
 > general in 1965, not a single one is still active.  One is dead and his
 > license was not renewed in 2002.  Two others are well past the 
expiration of
 > their licenses (in one case by 20 years), and the other three renew their
 > licenses every 10 years but have not been on the air in at least 10 years
 > (e.g., my friend Rick Hoberman WB2EAT).  Nonetheless, all five are in the
 > database.
 >
 > One of the other CQ Magazine Big Fibs is that there are more CW QSOs than
 > ever before.  They base that statistic on the number of CW QSOs 
reported for
 > Field Day and make the assumption that the proportion of CW QSOs on Field
 > Day is representative of the proportion during the rest of the year --
 > despite the fact that CW carries a double point multiplier that 
causes clubs
 > to press-gang their members into operating CW to get those multipliers.
 >
 > 73s
 > Jon
 > WB2RYV
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