PRESENTER OPINION : Contests and award schemes - what is the difference?

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Up until lately, in general terms, these two activities had their boundaries, defined something like this:

AWARD SCHEMES

Have no end date, activators and chasers may join or leave the scheme at any time.

There can be different sections, but an operator works to his or her target level.

Within the scheme itself, there is no "best operator".

Activity can be on any amateur band and on any day of the week.

CONTESTS

Are for a set period of time 4,6,8 hours, 1 day or a weekend(2 days) are common periods.

Any part of the contest more than a 4 hour sprint (which is often on a weekday evening), are at the weekends.

ONLY the ITU-defined contest bands and ideally the areas defined within those bands for contests by the IARU should be used.

There can be sections (for example, based on power), but within each section, the aim is to find the "best operator/station" based on points earned.

Of late, it seems to me that some contest organisers are calling their contests "Awards" in order to be able to operate on the WARC bands every day of the week.

I find this a little worrying as the ITU is the one who defines that the contests take place only on certain bands (often those where Amateur radio is the primary user), and if they perceive that this ruling is being abused, they may take action against amateur radio in general, not the contest/award organisers.

There is a good example of where one organisation covers both a "true" award scheme and also run a contest, which can provide points for the award scheme but is separate from it and only runs on a weekend and not on the WARC bands - that is IOTA.

What do you think? Please add comments in the comments box below.

PRESENTER OPINION : A Backpack Portable HF Beam? Yeah right!→

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PRESENTER OPINION : A Backpack Portable HF Beam? Yeah right!

It works! The two-element, two band (20 & 10m), single mast, HF Beam is finished at last and has brought in 20w SSB contacts with W, ZS, VK and ZL as well as most European countries from two SOTA activations in DL.

Sounds too good to be true? Well remember the physics of antennas don't really care whether equipment has got some big companies name on it or not, as long as it's the correct size and set up close to what is needed it'll work no matter how scruffy it looks and running low power means it can be made backpacker portable. I have created three different versions of the antenna, each of which can be single or multi-band.

My New years resolution was to finish this antenna and document it for others to build, despite some bad weather sessions (snow, winds, ice, rain etc.) I have now closed out this resolution.

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PRESENTER OPINION : A Short History of Radio News Receivers in Function Plans 1929-1983→

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PRESENTER OPINION : A Short History of Radio News Receivers in Function Plans 1929-1983

When Wolf-Dieter Roth (DL2MCD) first approached me to review this English translation of a classic German reference book, I wasn’t sure how I would do that as I am not a book reviewer, but rather an editor.

This also being a translation, I was afraid that I would spend my time correcting the text rather than enjoying the content. While there are some „unique“ translations, in general, the translation is good but what surprised me when I got a copy to read was that it was not what I was expecting.

This is not a normal textbook with different people‘s opinions of how good or bad a radio was or how it worked. It is more a technical reference that while indeed it explains how certain radio models worked and the progression of the technologies used over the years between 1929 and 1983, it does this mainly through technical block diagrams of the different radios.

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