Presidential Review of Contesting

Following disquiet about the adjudication of a RSGB Contest, the Board asked RSGB President John Gould, G3WKL, to conduct a broad review of the key aspects of contest management.

This culminated in a workshop held on 22 July 2015 and the notes of the event are here.

The Board subsequently endorsed the following vision for RSGB contests

The RSGB will organise and administer a range of contests appealing to a broad spectrum of the Membership that are well administered, actively supported by a significant subset of the Society Membership and encourage the achievement of the following objectives:
• To improve operating technique and station design/performance and encourage excellence
• To train the operators in readiness for the major global contests
• To encourage newcomers to take up contesting
• To appeal to people in all parts of the UK with stations of all types
• To increase usage of the bands
• To push the frontiers of relevant technologies
• To explore the limits of propagation
• To exist with the understanding and support of non-contesters
• To allow personal measurement of contest performance year-on-year and provide a personal yardstick for improvement
• To be fairly administered on a non-partisan basis
• To encourage a mentoring culture amongst the contest community to encourage and enable new contesters
• To have fun