According to Part 2 of the 2015 CQ World Wide Contests survey results, contesters want to see a time-limited category for single operators. In September the CQ WW Contest Committee surveyed everyone who had submitted a log in the 2014 CQ WW SSB and CW events, and issued a public invitation on the cq-contest e-mail reflector. CQ WW Contest Director Randy Thompson, K5ZD, said the committee received 5117 responses from contest operators around the world to Part 2 of the survey, which addressed possible rule changes. A vast majority of respondents answered “yes” to the question, “Do you support limiting the operating time of single operator entrants to less than 48 hours?” Currently single operators may operate for the entire 48-hour contest period.

“This question was designed to determine how broadly the interest in a time-limited category might be,” Thompson said in the survey report. “We were surprised at the high level of support for a time limit. It was even more surprising to see that the majority of support was coming from Europe. Even more interesting that it was serious competitors who wanted this change. While older ages were more in favor, the results were fairly consistent across all.”

According to the survey, 2775 respondents answered “yes,” and 1638 said “no,” while 694 offered no opinion.

A review of CQ World Wide entries for 2015 showed that approximately 90 percent of SSB operators stay in the chair for fewer than 30 hours, while some 90 percent of CW entrants operate fewer than 35 hours.

The survey results also suggested that a plurality  — nearly one-half — of contesters responding would prefer to maintain the separate Single Operator and Single Operator Assisted categories, rather than combining them into one entry category.