Bavarian Contest Club (BCC)

Speech of DL8OH at the BCC Buffet 2023

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Prolog:

I am trying not to bore you too much with reciting annual figures, numbers and results. Instead, I will try to tell you a story.

I must admit: The founding of the BCC is documented not very thoroughly. The first attempt, to bring light into this dark time was made by our late ex-President Ben, DL6RAI, when he remembered the first years of BCC-existence on occasion of the 20th Birthday of the BCC in 2003.

My short overview will begin with his findings.

1. The Beginning

The origin of the Bavarian Contest Club – the name says it all – is situated in Bavaria, which is in southern Germany, as most of you most probabely know. In the early eighties there were three major DX-associations in Germanys South and Southwest: The SDXG (Süddeutsche DX Gruppe) in the Southwest, the BDXG (Bavarian DX Group) around Munic and the EBDXA (East Bavarian DX Association). Main emphasis was collecting DX-Countries for DXCC awards. And also a perticipating in a contest here and then.

In 1983 contestminded hams from BDXG and EBDXA developed an idea of concentrating contest activities in a new Group, which should be more competitive in international contests. They named the baby Bavarian Contest Club (BCC). It turned out to be the groundbreaking for a now 40 years lasting successtory.

2. Presidents

BCC-Members were 10 to 15 Hams in the beginning. Members grew over the years considerably, there are 352 in our ranks today.

In the first years no particluar Club-organization was needed, but two men stood out to keep things going: DL6RAI and DL7MAE. They were detached by Bernhard, DF7RX, in 1990. He was the jack of the trade for everything, Secretary, QSL-Manager, editor and organzier for Contestexpeditions.

In 1999 Dieter, DL8OH took over as President for nine years with a new concept to spread the load over several shoulders and make clubwork more efficient. He served until 2007, when Ben, DL6RAI, took the helm. The late Ben had significant impact on the Club. Because of his many connections throughout the contest world, he made the BCC more international. He made it a voice which continues to carry weight and is heard in the world of contesting. Which was just recently awarded with his induction into the Contesters Hall of fame. Ben retired as President in 2020 and passed the baton to Chris, DL1MGB. Chris,a heavyweight in Contesting, has a worldwide reputation as successful Organizer of WRTC 2018 in Wittenberg and is now acting President of the BCC.

3. Motivation

The highest objective and overall aim of the Bavarian Contest Club is to win the club competition of the important HF-Contests. Any President’s job was to motivate all members to achieve this ambitiuos goal.

In 2005 the „Frequent Contester Program“ was launchend to boost contest activity among active and non-active members. Each contester was called to achieve at least 5´0 points in 11 selected contests, where BCC competes to other clubs in the club competion. In 2021 we saw 226 active Contesters out of 352 Members who amassed a total of more than 1.800 Mio points.

To further motivation, the BCC awards all those active OPs, who participate in all those 11 contests with the title BCC-Hero.

4. Projects

From 1999 to 2004 we enjoyed a period where many small, but very innovative products were developed. Little devices, that should help the contester to become more efficient. i.e. Headphones-amplifier, preselector, Lowpassfilter-Box stackmatch, just to name a few. These gadgets and gimmicks were more or less not accessable to the average contester in those days and therefore the BCC-homebrew-projekt created a small competitive advantage in contests.

Besides this an idea developed at the end of the nineties, to tackle the existing world record in CQWWs multi/multi-class in CW as well as in Phone in fact. The whole club was fascinated by this idea and after some sort of preliminary action and diplomatic negotiations, Ben, DL6FBL organized the CN8WW-Project 1999 and 2000. Conventional wisdom within USA-Contesters that time was: CQWW M/M can only be won from the northern rim of Southamerica. The BCC´s CN8WW-Project proved this to be wrong: Two new Worldrecords were the answer, whereof the Phone-Record from 2000 still stands until today.

The CN8WW-project as well as the Frequent Contester Programm led to a boost of activity over the following years. In these days BCC won many, may be even most of all club competitions worldwide.

5. Other Activities

Nowadays, all BCC-Members can be proud and thankful, to view their contestclub to be one of the most successful Contestclubs in the world.

As I said before: The Bavarian Contest Club has its origins in Bavaria. But it has blown away the geographical limitations of Bavaria and opened its ranks worldwide.

In 2022 we were 351 contesters with 40% coming from Bavaria still, 55% from other parts of Germany and 15% from abroad. The difference between our youngest Contester (DM7XX 18) and oldest Contester (DJ1OJ 87) is 69 years, almost a span of more than two generations. I have to point out: Both are active, in fact very active Contesters. You can find both in many contests. When DJ1OJ worked the All ASIA recently, he complained that he wasn’t able to create a decent pileup, because people did not believe his age and kept asking him to repeat it several times….I only can take my hat off before BCC`s most active senior contester.

Besides all contestactivities one should not forget, that the Bavarian Contestclub supported the generell idea of contesting over the years in many ways.

  • Right from the beginning until today, the BCC runs the only and unique WorldWide Meteorscatter-Contest (Tnx to DL1MAJ)
  • BCC-Members participated in all WRTCs from 1996 onwards til today.
  • Together with our friends of RRDXA, BCC organized the WRTC 2018 in Wittenberg.
  • BCC meets tradionally every year in January for Annual General Meeting (H3K)
  • BCC is member of RTA Runder Tisch Amateurfunk, a nationwide association of 17 AmateurRadio-Clubs, who negotiate and deal direct with the Communication department of the German Government.
  • BCC showed the flag on different occasions like, DX-Meetings, HF/VHF-Conference in Munich and last not least HamRadio here in Friedrichshafen. (Thats, why we are here)

6. Outlook

Over the last 40 years the Bavarian Contest Club has developed into a worldwide wellknown Contestclub. A vibrant congregation, where members

  • enjoy,
  • develop and enhance and
  • perform the Art of Contesting.

We are celebrating our 40th birthday today. I am sure, the success-story of the BCC had just begun.

With a deeper look into futur:

  • Let us attract more younger Contesters
  • Let us be decisive and persistent but also fair in contesting.
  • Let us face the challenges of the future,
  • Let us find decent solutions for the problems to come
  • Let us stand united as a strong and successful Contest Club.

With this I have no fear, that in 40 years someone – maybe also a former President – will stand in front of you and tell you the History of the Bavarian Contest Club.