Another video was posted on YouTube by Steve, WG0AT, from a QRP contest a few weeks ago. Steve is also called the Goathiker, you may have heard of him. He takes his goats Rooster and Peanut, who faithfully carry Steve’s equipment to mountaintops to operate QRP. This video was shot atop Mount Herman in Colorado, which is 9054 ft above sea level for the Polar Bear Moonlight Madness event.

All of his videos are put together so well, and I encourage you to check out Rooster and Peanut’s YouTube channel and I definitely recommend watching the video of their 2009 Field Day expedition.

Another member helpfully pointed out that despite the lack of Morse code testing, CW entries were actually on the rise. But for the life of me, I couldn’t find that thread or the statistics ever again through weeks and weeks of Googling with different keywords.

I e-mailed Sean Kutzko, KX9X, the ARRL Contest Branch Manager. About a day later, I got an e-mail back from him confirming that yes, there is an “upward trend” of CW contest entries in the last five years. Here’s the breakdown:

CW Sweepstakes entries have increased from 1,230 submitted logs in 2004
to 1,417 in 2008.

The ARRL DX CW Contest entries have risen from 2,567 in 2005 to 3,133 in
2009.

Field Day CW activity has gone from 503,205 CW QSOs in 2005 to 556,525
in 2009.

The sky isn’t falling, CW contesting is on the rise, and amateur radio ain’t dyin’. Today’s amateur radio operators are no less “real” than they were 50 years ago, whether they know code or not.