I Listen To H. Ward Silver, N0AX When He Writes About RadioSport

I played video games as a teenager and mostly likely about 99.9 percent of males in my cohort also played video games. However, setting bias aside, and in my opinion, the games of today pound the likes of Missile Command, Tank, and Pong into the dust.

An interesting phenomena occurred over the weekend as discussed in KL8DX's blog My take on 63 Degrees of Propagation. The use of Hiram Percy Maxim's spark key connected to W1AW coupled with an event sponsored by the Straight Key Century Club.

The parallel is striking between that of a video game where one pursues the bonus station with a connection to history. Maxim's spark key is straight off the page of Steampunk technology.

Please read what H. Ward Silver, N0AX one of our statesmen has to say...  

Message: 8 Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 10:35:55 -0500 
From: Ward Silver 
To: cq-contest@contesting.com 
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Real-time Radiosport 

In my opinion, the biggest obstacle to maintaining the connected generation's interest in radiosport is how long it takes to figure out who actually won. The contests are fairly exciting and challenging whether you use spotting information or not. They get that and are intrigued by the worldwide aspect and the dependence on solar and terrestrial conditions. But their interest usually dissipates immediately (and irrevocably) when you explain that the results aren't known for several weeks or months. Even the fastest reporting - WRTC's 24-hours - is ridiculous to someone accustomed to knowing their score and place not only immediately following the end of the game but at all times throughout the game. 

So we can argue all we want about format and point counts and spots or no spots but those come in a distant second. I don't believe there is much to be gained by changing the user interface to be more game-like, rather to use the power of the Internet to conduct the administration of the event in the time-frame to which people have become accustomed. "Waiting for the magazine to come out" is not part of the modern sporting lexicon.

73, Ward N0AX