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Comment made on another forum

Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 10:07 am
by g4iar
Comments have been made on another forum saying "WAB has never been as interesting or as much fun once they did away with the Counties and ratable districts elements" and "I think WAB lost its way at some point,the activity dropped like a stone on VHF".

We don't know which forum this is, we have only received a copy/paste of the relevant posts, so we are replying on our own forum to the comments made behind our backs. To set the record straight, Graham, G4JZF has this to say:

From 1995 until 1998 the Government decided to change Districts and some Counties to Unitary Authorities and boundary changes at the same time. This caused a lot of confusion with no maps available at the time with the new boundaries and Authorities and we lost a lot of WAB members because of it. (far more than when we changed to the present Awards). In 2009 the Government were again proposing to change more Districts & Counties to Unitary Authorities, ie the County of Cornwall becoming Cornwall UA and no Districts. At the same time N. Ireland were undecided about changing theirs yet again. That is why we went with the 10 x 10km grid squares only which would mean not having to change the Awards every time the Government decided it wanted to make changes. There are 3,137 squares, a good many have not been activated since the start of the new awards in 2009. In the last 18 months we have had more new members than at any time since the 1980's and old members have come back to WAB after many years break in the last few months

As regards VHF, VHF has been on the decline for many years which has not been helped by the present licencing system. At one time you
could not find a space on 144MHz during contests that is not the case these days. I started my days off on VHF in 1979 and so I have seen the changes more so than some but still prefer VHF.

For those that have made comments perhaps you should send them to the WAB Secreatary Geoff G7GJU rather than on forums, or better still if you are not happy with the Committee you should join the Committee.

As for me, if WAB has lost it way and is not as much fun, I wonder why I had my busiest ever year last year? I have been in WAB for 36 years now and this is the first time that we have actually got a stable awards scheme, free of outside influences. Ah, well, as they say, you can please all of the people some of the time.................................

73, Dave, G4IAR
Awards Manager