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by epcoa 355 days ago
> Although Field Day is not a contest, these guys really really wanted to finish in the top 10 for class 2A.

That’s literally a contest. If the scoring was private maybe I’d agree.

Field Day may serve other purposes too, but it’s a contest, if not purely so.

2 comments

It's certainly a contest for some groups, but I can't say what percentage that would be. There's many many groups that aren't even remotely competitive and for some groups it's primarily a social event.

When we participated with W6YL, we had our own tent, food, and mass quantities of beer. Aside from folks stopping by the tent out of curiosity, it was not a social event at all.

One guy who was a master CW operator wanted to see how the satellite worked. We hooked his keyer up to the 70cm transmitter and let him go at it. At first, hearing his own signal after a 250 millisecond delay confused him a little but I turned the receive audio down to help him out.

That’s like saying POTA is a contest which it isn’t