[CW] CQ-Contest

[scott mcmullen]

--- On Mon, 11/9/09, D. Chester <k4kyv at charter.net> wrote:

> I didn't participate in the SS
> contest, but I did listen some, and was 
> impressed by the amount of CW activity. In the past few
> years, CW contests 
> seem to draw more operators out of the woodwork than do the
> QRMtests on 
> phone.
> 

I enjoyed all the activity, too.

It's good to see this event with participation at historic 
levels, but it would be great to see the old records broken.

FWIW, 1958 was the 25th anniversary of ARRL Sweepstakes,
and there were 1677 logs submitted for SS-cw (706 were 
submitted for SS-phone).

2008 was the 75th anniversary, and 1419 logs were submitted
in SS-cw (1872 were submitted in SS-ph; which according to
QST, was a record number of logs).

When you consider how many hams there were in 1958, and that
every entry required paper and postage, the level of participation 
in 1958 SS-cw is pretty amazing. 1677 would have been over 1% of 
the licensed amateurs from that time. 

The QST article said the stack of received paper entries was nearly 
5 feet tall!

If the participation level were comparable today, there would
be over 6000 entries!

SS-ph surpassed SS-cw in popularity in the late 70's.

73
Scott
W5ESE