|
New to Ham Radio?
My Profile
Community
Articles
Forums
News
Reviews
Friends Remembered
Speak Out
Strays
Survey Question
Operating
Contesting
DX Cluster Spots
Propagation
Resources
Calendar
Classifieds
Ham Exams
Ham Links
List Archives
News Articles
Product Reviews
QSL Managers
Site Info
eHam Help (FAQ)
Support the site
The eHam Team
Advertising Info
Vision Statement
About eHam.net
|
|
1-4 of 4 messages
|
Page 1 of 1
|
|
A return to sanity in ARRL DX CW
|
Reply
|
|
by N3QE on March 3, 2009
|
Mail this to a friend!
|
Last year many of the big guns were operating with completely insane keying rates, 60+ WPM for parts of the exchanges. I guess in some attempt at getting their rate up by shaving a fraction of a second off of each QSO. And they weren't ID'ing hardly at all, resulting in a lot of "QSO B4" or simply "DUPE". Sometimes I would tune across them and they would simply send "DUPE" without identifying who they thought was a dupe... resulting in some bizarre LACK OF EXCHANGES sort of like Abbot and Costello's "Who's on first?" like this:
TEST
(stations 1,2, and 3 send their calls)
DUPE
(stations 1,2, and 3 send their calls)
DUPE TEST
(stations 1,2,3, and 4 send their calls)
DUPE
(eventually they just give up...)
And to top it all off last year, there were several stations that were mis-keying consistently. 6Y1LZ really was ID'ing himself as BY1LZ, and nobody can figure out why. It's not that the amp switching was cutting off a leading dot. Did he think that he could up his QSO rate by shaving a dot out of the middle of his callsign? WTF?
Oh, yeah, not all the problems were the DX. Last year there were a lot of VE's running the V and E together like it was some kind of fashion craze, and a couple of US stations that were running their leading K or W into the numeral too. Usually the DX could figure out what was going on but it hardly seems like a good fashion craze to get into.
Things seemed to return to sanity for the most part this year. There were still a couple of robo-stations keying at extreme rates... but most I think learned their lesson. ID'ing was way way better, resulting in a lot fewer dupes. I heard a couple of VE's running their V's and E's together again all the time.
I am not a big gun, I don't really appreciate the fine tuning of parameters to up contest rates the way they do. But from my end as a little gun, things were far more rational, with much less useless QRM and a lot more useful stuff going on.
Tim.
|
| |
|
RE: A return to sanity in ARRL DX CW
|
Reply
|
|
by W6PU on March 4, 2009
|
Mail this to a friend!
|
I couldn't agree with you more on this subject! It has become absolutely ridiculous, and counter productive to high QSO rates!
Some of these guys will go for five minutes or more without signing their calls. Don't they care how much confusion and how many Dupes result by this very poor
operating?
Whatever happened to the concept of "Accuracy before speed?"
73
Bob W6PU
Ex K2DGT
Ex W6PLH
Ex K2GL Team Op.
|
| |
|
RE: A return to sanity in ARRL DX CW
|
Reply
|
|
by N3QE on March 9, 2009
|
Mail this to a friend!
|
W6PU writes:
> It has become absolutely ridiculous,
> and counter productive to high QSO rates!
My gut feeling was that in 2006/2007/2008 things got worse and worse and worse as not-so-experienced folks got further and further into running the big guns with some misconceived notions of what drove the rate.
But the 2009 Feb ARRL DX CW was a breath of fresh air. It felt like finally the big guns realized that the misconceived notions of rate cannot overrule fundamentally good operating practices. At least most of the time.
Again, I write all this as a little gun and one with not enough skills to run a big gun, but at least with 30+ years of experience as a little gun under his belt. I look at the online discussions of big guns (or at least big gun wannabes) at other sites and realize that I am way way incapable of participating in those discussions. But on-the-air, I feel like the 2009 Feb ARR DX CW was a real return to sanity with really classy top-notch operating ruling the airwaves despite a couple of remaining loudmouth bad operations.
|
| |
|
RE: A return to sanity in ARRL DX CW
|
Reply
|
|
by KT8K on March 23, 2009
|
Mail this to a friend!
|
I agree as well: this was the best ARRL DX CW test I can remember, especially as far as the CW speed and ID-ing went. I only heard perhaps two or three stations running above 35 wpm, and it wasn't working that well for them. The 25-30 wpm stations were doing quite well, though, and I was able to work 449 Qs in (I'm guessing) under 30 hours with my 5 watts to wires and verticals - a lifetime best and major personal victory for me. I hope future contests will follow the trend. I will continue operating as I have, running up to 30 wpm but mostly 24-28 with occasional dips down to 20 or even lower for stations sending at those speeds.
With better operating (by others as well as myself) I am finding more fun!
Hope to catch you all in WPX SSB this weekend!
73 de kt8k - Tim
|
| |
|
Email Subscription
You are not subscribed to this topic.
Subscribe!
My Subscriptions
Subscriptions Help
Check our help page for help using
Forum, or send questions, comments, or suggestions to the
Forum Manager.
|
|
|
