I found George's thoughts particularly interesting and reminiscent of the longstanding discussion around 10m in times of poor propagation. In that light, I thought it might be interesting to review contest entry stats from the past few years:
ARRL 160 CQ WW 160 CW 2006: 1052 2007: 1801 2007: 1197 2008: 1860 2008: 1281 2009: 2220 2009: 1336 2010: 2390 2010: 1283 Note that I paired ARRL 160 and CQ WW 160 by "season" rather than by calendar year, since that better reflects the situation on top band. I believe this supports George's suggestion that hams want to get on the band when there are other stations to work. Since both contests accept "within country" as well as "between country" contacts, it doesn't seem to matter to many of the entrants whether the QSO is to another section, another zone or another country. Perhaps it's just not in our DNA to brave the challenging nature of the band on a daily basis year-in and year-out. -- 73 -- Brian -- K1LI _______________________________________________ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
