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Author Topic: CY0S Thread  (Read 3656 times)

NU1O

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Re: CY0S Thread
« Reply #165 on: Yesterday at 01:11:26 PM »


If you (the generic you) choose to limit yourself to one Q per band and one per mode that's your own self-imposed limit. Same as if you choose to only use radios you build yourself, or only use QRP or only CW, or log on paper or whatever hurdles you want. Knock yourself out and have fun. When you're a handful back from #1 HR you have to be ready in case someone gets a one-day approval for a demonstration station in Pyongyang or a couple of guys get surprise permission to activate Pratas or San Felix.

I vividly remember when 7O6T was announced in 2012. I think there was a 5 day lead time before they went QRV, and at the time Yemen was either #2 or #3 most wanted, behind P5 and either ahead of or just behind Scarborough Reef. Anybody who's skills had atrophied in the weeks or months leading up to that operation may not have gotten them, or had a lot more trouble working them; those pileups were bloody epic. And there's also the time factor. If your skills are up to date and your reflexes are honed it's easy to get it and out of a snarling, nasty dawgpile right quick fast and in a hurry.

But then there are the more mundane reasons: Is my rotor working correctly? Is my SWR still flat where it should be? Do I have my band/mode presets ready to roll, and do I remember how to quickly go split and not accidentally transmit over the DX? How efficient will I be when it comes time to find the CW QSX? Do I know how to properly set FT8 for F/H or determine if the DX is using MSHV? Is my clock accurate? All of these are simple tasks to be sure, but the more I repeat them the more they remain front-and-center in my mind and the less I have to fumble when the alarms go off. Firefighters drill in their downtime for the same reason. Can they still throw a ladder as fast as they were taught? Can they get water flowing in under 60 seconds? Same applies to this hobby or any other endeavour in life. Practice makes perfect, and the only way to practice DX pileups is to work other DX pileups.

I'm sick of the holier-than-thou types who believe their techniques and methodologies are the only acceptable ones that all of us must follow to work DX—as if these were edicts handed down on stone tablets by Hiram Percy Maxim himself. Get over yourselves. You do you and I'll do me.

This is The Way.

I don't have a problem with you working DX on every band and every mode.  It's not something I do but its your right.  You vastly overrate the skill in all of this.  You aren't a ballplayer hitting 99 mph fastballs and 88 mph curves. You are a radio geek like the rest of us.  In a CW pileup you push a button to send your call and when the DX calls you, you hit another button which sends "5NN TU".  And, you need to hone that skill?
Don't make me laugh because the skill involved is very minimal.

I have the same countries worked as you and I don't consider what I've done as requiring much skill.  It took a lot time and dedication but not a whole lot of skill.  To say you work DX to hone your skills is laughable.
You work DX because it gives you a rush and because you like doing so. I still experience that rush when I work a new one but not when working Rwanda, and I didn't work that expedition for the practice but for needed band slots.
« Last Edit: Yesterday at 01:14:00 PM by NU1O »
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KD6KVL

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Re: CY0S Thread
« Reply #166 on: Yesterday at 01:27:43 PM »

" In a CW pileup you push a button to send your call and when the DX calls you, you hit another button which sends "5NN TU".  And, you need to hone that skill?"

Really?  Its that easy?  Are you serious?  Just press the button and whamo?  Come on man.
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Frank KG6N

W2IRT

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Re: CY0S Thread
« Reply #167 on: Yesterday at 01:54:36 PM »

You vastly overrate the skill in all of this.  You aren't a ballplayer hitting 99 mph fastballs and 88 mph curves. You are a radio geek like the rest of us.  In a CW pileup you push a button to send your call and when the DX calls you, you hit another button which sends "5NN TU".  And, you need to hone that skill?
And the professional baseball player that hits a 90 MPH fastball needs to hone that skill daily or soon he won't be a professional baseball player any more.

The skill isn't pushing a button (or in my case using my paddles), but knowing precisely when and where to send the callsign. To say that doesn't require skill is laughable, and those who don't have a handle on it are often the causes of QRM, which affects everybody. Watch a bandscope sometime in a 15 or 20kHz pileup and see how many idiots are calling blindly when the DX is working someone. They haven't mastered or honed the skill. You can't really practice this in day-to-day CW QSOs or even in CW contests; it's something you can only do in a good size DXpedition pileup.

Dunno about you, but I don't want to keep futzing around with settings when the alarms go off. Sure it's nice to hear my call coming back to me from a pileup, but by working common 9Vs or 9M2/6s or even YBs, JTs, and VR2s it's good practice since they always draw nice pileups from North America. I don't need any of the above entities on 10-40, but I still call them when I see them spotted and I have time to play radio.

Sure it's a hobby and it's fun (for various definitions of fun), but it's also a skill that experienced DXers need to keep practicing. YMMV, naturally. It's also why I love the CQDX Marathon: it wipes the slate clean every January 1st and I get to work all the common and not-so-common ones again. Keeps the cobwebs from forming.
« Last Edit: Yesterday at 01:56:58 PM by W2IRT »
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Night gathers and now my watch begins. It shall not end until I reach Top of the Honor Roll

Great times are at hand, and soon there will be DX for all—although more for some than for others.

KD6KVL

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Re: CY0S Thread
« Reply #168 on: Yesterday at 02:33:52 PM »

"I didn't work that expedition for the practice but for needed band slots."
Good for you!  That brownie point and $3 gets you a cup of coffee.  Its still not your place to tell people what they can or can't do on the radio.  Its awesome you worked all those countries with no skill!  Blind luck got you so far! 
Just to be clear, you believe there is no skill in finding the person the dx calls in a large pile up, figuring out the pattern of where he is going to call next, and being there with your cw signal?  None?  My 9 year old can do it?
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Frank KG6N

NU1O

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Re: CY0S Thread
« Reply #169 on: Yesterday at 03:03:04 PM »

And the professional baseball player that hits a 90 MPH fastball needs to hone that skill daily or soon he won't be a professional baseball player any more.



Let me reiterate, none of us are the equivalent of major league athletes. To suggest we are is laughable.

If you need to constantly work pileups to be able to find out where the DX is listening you must have cognitive issues I don't have.  I worked the 9X on three bands.  The pileups were not that big.  I was in and out of all three in under 15 minutes.  I wouldn't come close to comparing that expedition to a top 50 most wanted so I don't know what skills you honed by working them on every band.

Pileups are just not as hard as some of you are making them out to be.
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WO7R

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Re: CY0S Thread
« Reply #170 on: Yesterday at 03:09:05 PM »

CY0S was easy to work and we all should have expected it to  be easy to work.

Because it was close, as semi-rare ones go, then except for 10m sometimes being too close, we are going to have a 5, 10, maybe 20 dB advantage (for once) on our brethren in Europe.  Don't know what it is, but look it up on VOACAP or something.  It was surely significant.

So, we get through with a lot less skill this time because when five stations figure out where the DX is going to be next, the winner is going to be among the louder of the five.  This time around, that's likely to be one of us.  So, of course it is going to take less time. . .and even a little less skill.

When the situation is reversed it means not only do we have to have the skill, we have to have a little luck in being perhaps the only station that guesses right or at any rate, none of the louder ones (as heard by the DX).

So, no, work CY0S and like stations if you enjoy it, that's what we're really here for.  But it isn't much of a warmup for winning through even for something as innocuous as 1A0KM.

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W2IRT

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Re: CY0S Thread
« Reply #171 on: Yesterday at 04:04:50 PM »

CY0S was easy to work and we all should have expected it to  be easy to work.
Depends on the band. To this day I've never worked or even heard Sable Island on 10 or 12m SSB. This operation I couldn't even hear them on 10 CW!

As for 1A0, which is located right smack dab in the middle of the bear's cage known as southern Europe, and actually inside the second-least-needed DXCC entity in the world, I'd take my chances piggying out on Sable I. from Europe than I would clearing the table of SMOM from New Jersey. I still have a ton of holes to fill in my 1A0 Bingo card.
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Night gathers and now my watch begins. It shall not end until I reach Top of the Honor Roll

Great times are at hand, and soon there will be DX for all—although more for some than for others.

N4UFO

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Re: CY0S Thread
« Reply #172 on: Yesterday at 08:35:30 PM »

The skill isn't pushing a button, but knowing precisely when and where to send the callsign.

Hmmm... where have I heard that argument before?
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N2SR

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Re: CY0S Thread
« Reply #173 on: Today at 08:15:02 AM »

What contest skills do you hone? 


The skill isn't pushing a button (or in my case using my paddles), but knowing precisely when and where to send the callsign. To say that doesn't require skill is laughable, and those who don't have a handle on it are often the causes of QRM, which affects everybody. Watch a bandscope sometime in a 15 or 20kHz pileup and see how many idiots are calling blindly when the DX is working someone. They haven't mastered or honed the skill. You can't really practice this in day-to-day CW QSOs or even in CW contests; it's something you can only do in a good size DXpedition pileup.

Dunno about you, but I don't want to keep futzing around with settings when the alarms go off. Sure it's nice to hear my call coming back to me from a pileup, but by working common 9Vs or 9M2/6s or even YBs, JTs, and VR2s it's good practice since they always draw nice pileups from North America. I don't need any of the above entities on 10-40, but I still call them when I see them spotted and I have time to play radio.

Sure it's a hobby and it's fun (for various definitions of fun), but it's also a skill that experienced DXers need to keep practicing. YMMV, naturally. It's also why I love the CQDX Marathon: it wipes the slate clean every January 1st and I get to work all the common and not-so-common ones again. Keeps the cobwebs from forming.

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K0UA

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Re: CY0S Thread
« Reply #174 on: Today at 09:18:30 AM »

I am glad we are all getting a lot of exercise in "laughing" at all the laughable stuff. I see your laughable, and raise you one laugh.  ;D
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73  James K0UA
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