On Jul 14, 5:55 pm, wrote:
On Jul 14, 3:10 pm, KC4UAI wrote:

On Jul 11, 8:44 pm, wrote:

Besides,
I'd hate to lug enough batteries around to get a 100W tube station on
the air in a parking lot.

Batteries? Parking lot?

I've done FD with tube gear, it's not that much harder than with
"modern" stuff.
The main difference is that the rigs tend to be bigger and heavier,
and you
need to know how to tune them up. All part of the game.

In 1995 I used the rig shown on my web page (google my call to see it)
on
Field Day in clas 1B-1. Antennas were an 80/40 inverted V with the
apex at 40 feet
on a homebrew wooden mast and a 20 meter ground plane vertical.
Paper logs, bug and straight keys. Power from a generator. All set up
in
a tent, on a homebrew portable table. Also had my 2 meter
rig for FM simplex QSOs. This was a solo operation - I brought
everything to the site, set up
all by myself, operated all 24 hours, took everything down and brought
it home. All of the
equipment and me in a 1980 VW Rabbit.

629 CW QSOs, 11 FM voice QSOs. Bonuses for 100% emergency power, W1AW
message, message to SM, and making 10 QSOs on VHF/UHF.

A lot of work but a lot of fun too. K0HB speaks of "a boy and his
radio" and that's
what it was. Wasn't the only time I did it, either.


Well, my point was that technology has moved on and right now tubes
are not state of the art. (Not saying that they won't be in the
future.) And I’ll bet your 2 Meter rig was at least partly solid
state. Sure they work (and in some cases are the optimal solution for
a problem) but I don't see one new rig for sale today that has even
one tube.

I think that the rules of contests may need to be adapted from time to
time to adjust for technology as it marches on, however I think that
we need to be mindful of two things.

First, the rules must be clearly written so everybody understands
where the various lines are drawn.

Second, they need to keep things as simple as possible.

Apart from that, the folks who are writing the rules for these events
are the ones who will need to make the choices. If a contest's rules
attract participants, good for them, if they are no longer popular
they need to adapt or close up shop.

Personally, I'm worried that with the increased average age for your
local ham translates into lack of interest for those of us who are
younger (say mid 40s). I see this as a problem for contests and not
just the hobby in general.

-= KC4UAI =-