[NLRS] VHF+ Terrestrial Contest Survey

[jcplatt1 at mmm.com]

Hello NLRS land.

The purpose of this email is to provide you with clarification regarding
your club officer's actions around the recent VHF+ survey    By now many of
you are receiving an email from Steve Hicks, N5AC, regarding your
participation in this survey and the next course of action.    In that
letter Steve goes on to discuss how local clubs, clubs like the NLRS, have
been asked for input as well.    Further in this letter Steve indicates
that three clubs declined to participate in the write-up and stated their
reasons as either "significant ARRL involvement in the group or they felt
that there really wasn’t an issue with the current rules".  Those three
clubs are the Grid Pirates, Northern Lights Radio Society, and Mount
Greylock Expeditionary Force (W2SZ).
From a NLRS perspective, the reason that Steve stated for not participating
as a club isnt stated quite right ..... what I said in my letter back to
Steve in declining his invitation to participate as a club was that the
survey issues are simply not issues in NLRS-land.   As such, as a club
entity, they are not on our radar screen.   This doesn't mean that we are
not interested in the discussion or the survey data .... quite the
opposite.   You may remember that I encouraged all NLRS members to
participate in the survey.

The letter that I sent to Steve that outlines why the NLRS was not
interested in participating as a club entity is attached below for your
review.

73, Jon
W0ZQ

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Hello Steve

The purpose of this email is to provide you with the NLRS response to your
request dated 10/26/06.    Your request seeks club input to your recent
survey.

I discussed your request with our club officers and with our past
president.    We are in agreement that as a club, NLRS is not interested in
providing a club response other than what is represented and stated in this
email.     This is not to say that we are not interested in the survey, its
only to say that as a club entity we are not interested in supporting your
request.

Here in what I like to call "NLRS-land", home of Rovermania, grid circling,
pack roving, and capture rovers are non-issue .... we don't practice them.
Back in the late 80's a few of us did play with some grid circling, but we
quickly found out that its really pretty boring.     And the concept of
being a captive rover is something we simply don't understand .... why
would anyone WANT to be a captured rover.    Anyway, you get the idea.   We
simply do not practice these types of activities in our area.     Yes,
someone somewhere can practice grid circling and generate a million points
using an array of low powered, simple antenna handhelds and trounce other
rover scores, but we simply do not recognize these activities as real
rovers anyway ..... they are obviously playing a different game (and having
fun doing so).

We DO encourage rovers to work other rovers, but not to grid circle.    For
example during Rovermania III, as W0ZQ/R, I worked 342 total QSOs of which
73 of those were with 8 different rovers.   The other 269 QSOs were with
fixed stations.   Perhaps my best rover-to-rover DX was with W9FZ/R at just
over 200 km and up through 10gigs.   The shortest was perhaps 200 yards
when WA0VPJ/R drove up to "my" grid corner.

Thanks for leading the way on this survey.    As president of the NLRS I
have encourage all of our members to complete it.   However, in
consultation with the current and past club officers, I do not feel that
the NLRS wants to participate as a entity per your 10/26/06 request.    The
reason for not participating as a club is that its not a significant issue
in our area.   We do acknowledge the more national discussion and are very
interested in the surveys data.

If you would like you can use this email as part of your formal club
feedback.    By way of background, the NLRS currently has about 100 club
members in good standing and we are active in all VHF/UHF and microwave
contests.    A recent club survey that is just now being completed shows
that our "average" club member is active on almost six VHF/UHF & microwave
bands each.    Our website is at http://www.nlrs.org/  .

PS:   As you may be aware I am also the Dakota Division VUAC
representative, so I have two hats.    This discussion and email was
written while only wearing my NLRS President cap.

73, Jon Platt
W0ZQ
Pres NLRS

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