In September, 2010, a survey on the WPX Contest was sent to everyone who had submitted a log in the 2010 WPX RTTY, SSB, and CW contests. Read part 1 first.
Q. Should logs be open to the public?
The CQ WW Contest has led the way for many years in making submitted logs publicly available. We wanted to see if WPX participants would like to have the same opportunity.
The table below shows the results segmented by operating style.
|
Should logs be open to the public? |
||||||
| Strongly Agree | Agree | Undecided | Disagree | Strongly Disagree | Row Totals | |
| Serious competitor trying to win a certificate |
570 |
565 |
125 |
90 |
48 |
1398 |
|
40.8% |
40.4% |
8.9% |
6.4% |
3.4% |
29.6% |
|
| Part time operator trying for the highest score possible |
444 |
715 |
190 |
103 |
37 |
1489 |
|
29.8% |
48.0% |
12.8% |
6.9% |
2.5% |
31.5% |
|
| Chasing contacts for WPX or other awards |
147 |
280 |
75 |
42 |
20 |
564 |
|
26.1% |
49.6% |
13.3% |
7.4% |
3.5% |
11.9% |
|
| Having fun and giving points to others |
309 |
538 |
137 |
100 |
35 |
1119 |
|
27.6% |
48.1% |
12.2% |
8.9% |
3.1% |
23.7% |
|
| Other |
53 |
59 |
25 |
12 |
8 |
157 |
|
33.8% |
37.6% |
15.9% |
7.6% |
5.1% |
3.3% |
|
| Column Total |
1523 |
2157 |
552 |
347 |
148 |
4727 |
| Column Percent |
32.2% |
45.6% |
11.7% |
7.3% |
3.1% |
100% |
It is good to see that the results are consistent across all participation types. Between 70 and 80% are in Agree or Strongly Agree. Approximately 10% of the entrants do not want their logs made public.
Based on this level of support, we WILL make logs publicly available on the web site after the results are released. We WILL NOT release any logs that are submitted as CHECKLOG. We will also remove all email and postal addresses from the published logs to address privacy concerns.
Q. Should log checking reports be open to the public?
While making logs public, the CQWW Contest has kept log checking reports hidden behind passwords provided to each entrant. This creates a lot of extra administrative work and we wanted to see if participants would be open to making this information public.
|
Should log checking reports be open to the public? |
||||||
| Strongly Agree | Agree | Undecided | Disagree | Strongly Disagree | Row Totals | |
| Serious competitor trying to win a certificate |
471 |
530 |
174 |
169 |
54 |
1398 |
|
33.7% |
37.9% |
12.4% |
12.1% |
3.9% |
29.6% |
|
| Part time operator trying for the highest score possible |
389 |
668 |
240 |
156 |
36 |
1489 |
|
26.1% |
44.9% |
16.1% |
10.5% |
2.4% |
31.5% |
|
| Chasing contacts for WPX or other awards |
144 |
276 |
79 |
44 |
21 |
564 |
|
25.5% |
48.9% |
14.0% |
7.8% |
3.7% |
11.9% |
|
| Having fun and giving points to others |
266 |
544 |
175 |
97 |
37 |
1119 |
|
23.8% |
48.6% |
15.6% |
8.7% |
3.3% |
23.7% |
|
| Other |
43 |
63 |
26 |
16 |
9 |
157 |
|
27.4% |
40.1% |
16.6% |
10.2% |
5.7% |
3.3% |
|
| Column Total |
1313 |
2081 |
694 |
482 |
157 |
4727 |
| Column Percent |
27.8% |
44.0% |
14.7% |
10.2% |
3.3% |
100% |
Once again the results were consistent across all operating styles. The most serious competitors (who typically have the cleanest logs) were most in favor of making the log checking reports public. The casual operators were less in favor.
No decision on publishing log checking reports has been made. We continue to seek input on this topic.
Q. The Club Competition requires all club members to reside or operate from within a 275 km circle (except DXpeditions). Should the 275 km distance limit be changed?
Beginning with 2009, the club category rules for WPX SSB/CW were changed to match those of the CQWW Contest. We received many different suggestions around this topic and wanted to get some feedback from the participants on the issue.
| Answer | Count | Percent |
| No change | 1937 | 41.44% |
| Increase to 500 km | 499 | 10.68% |
| Remove limit | 711 | 15.21% |
| Don’t care | 1335 | 28.56% |
| Other | 192 | 4.11% |
| Total | 4674 |
46% of the responses from North America were in favor of no change (compared to 26% of Europeans). Those from South America and Asia were in favor of removing the limit completely. A sizable group had no opinion at all. We continue to seek input on this topic before making a final decision.
Q. Have you downloaded a certificate from the cqwpx.com web site?
| Answer | Count | Percent |
| Yes | 1444 | 30.06% |
| No | 3359 | 69.94% |
The WPX SSB and CW contest results allow any participant to download a certificate in Adobe pdf format. The RTTY contest does not yet have this capability.
We were happy to see that the number of people who had downloaded a certificate increased from 20.5% in 2009 to 30% this year. It was the part time operators trying to for highest score who were most likely to have tried the online certificate feature.
Q. If you won a certificate, would you be willing pay $1 USD to receive the certificate by mail?
The purpose of this question was to measure the value that entrants place on receiving a printed certificate
in the mail.
| Answer | Count | Percent |
| Yes | 2812 | 58.55% |
| No | 1255 | 26.13% |
| Don’t care | 736 | 15.32% |
It was very gratifying to see this level of support for paper certificates by mail. We hear you and will do our best to see that this continues. We will explore a method for entrants to opt out of receiving certificates as a way to help lower our costs.
End of part 2. Look for more results in part 3 coming soon…