CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB
Call: VE7FO
Operator(s): B. COLLINS, R. FLEMING, J. PETERS, N. PRBTANI, E. FRIESEN, R, ALY,
A. FAREMO, R. COWEN, V. DENHERTOG, K. SWINNEY, VE7VPU, VE7HAK, VE7FO
Station: VE7FO
Class: M/S LP
QTH: Vancouver
Operating Time (hrs): 20.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160:
80: 2 2 2
40: 1 1 1
20: 51 14 21
15: 66 15 22
10: 105 18 28
------------------------------
Total: 225 50 74 Total Score = 70,680
Club: British Columbia DX Club
Comments:
This is an abbreviated version of the story. The full version is to be
published in NCJ.
Well, this was "a little different".
An astonishing result of 225 Qs, 74 mults and 50 zones. Not only that, it took
only 13 ops to achieve this magnificent multi-op, single-transmitter total.
HOW WAS THIS ALMOST MIRACULOUS RESULT ACHIEVED?
It all comes from my desire to introduce more people to the contesting side of
HF radio. I routinely invite members of the emergency comms club to which I
belong to come to my QTH to get some contesting experience. While I got a
number of takers at first, and I have created one rabid contester, interest
seems to have fallen off. One evening, while instructing the Basic Licence
class the club offers, I was trying to think of ways to make the subject matter
come alive when it dawned on me that there were 15 or so potential contesters
all looking at me. So I told them that they should all come to my station where
I would show them the rudiments of HF Operating and that they would be talking
to hams all over N America and "maybe beyond" (heh, heh, heh - little do they
know what I have in mind for them!), and that this would help a lot to provide
context for the material being taught. For example, when I'm discussing
interference, it won't be an abstract concept, they'll be remembering the
difficulty in copying that weak station amongst all the QRM. They must have
believed me because 11 of them signed up. (Unfortunately, one of them had to
cancel.) Well, for someone hoping to interest people in contesting, this was
Heaven, indeed.
HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED.
I established 2 operating positions - a Spotting position and a Transmitting
position. Each position had a computer running TRLog and they were networked
together.
The Contest has just started and I settle down to do a little operating of my
own, as the students wouldn't be coming until 8 am Saturday. Immediately I find
I have show-stopping difficulties with Tx feedback which, fortunately, I was
able to fix. For a while it looked like I might have to cancel the best turnout
of newbie ops I've ever had. Managed to get in a few hours of fun before bed
time.
It's Saturday AM. The students came, one at a time, at hourly intervals. Upon
arrival, each student was given a tour of the antenna farm and shown what many
of the antennas discussed in class actually look like. Given that I'm on a 33 x
120 ft lot, this didn't take long.
Next he went to the Spotting position for what was left of the hour where VA7IRL
(the aforementioned rabid contester) ran him through the basics of tuning an SSB
signal, decoding the phonetics, keying the call into the computer and sending
the spot to the Transmitting position. There was also info on what the contest
was about, the protocol for making contacts and discussion of techniques for
maximizing the rate (and why that matters). Emphasis was placed on how to know
when to call a Running station as, in the past, it has been found that getting
the rhythm of the contact process is quite difficult for beginners. I had a
cheat sheet showing the QSO sequence from the point of view of a Running station
and another from the point of view of an S&P station. All this while the
student is listening to stations exhibiting varying degrees of operating skill.
VA7IRL did a fabulous job of this. As he wasn't able to be there full time, I
also did some of this, nowhere near as well as he did. Thanks Anthony.
At the end of the hour, the student moved to the Transmitting position where I
sat lurking, rather like a spider in the center of his web, heh, heh, heh.
(Some wild Hallowe'en organ music from the garret here, please. Organist must
wear tie and tails and look appropriately insane. Failing that, maybe a little
Pink Floyd. Careful with that axe, Eugene.)
Some decisions had to be made about what the student should do at the
Transmitting position. I felt that the best experience (most fun) would be
provided by having the student make as many contacts as possible during his hour
and do his own (highly coached) logging. So, while they learned to tune in SSB
at the Spotting position, I did any required tuning to speed things up. To the
extent possible, we simply jumped from spot to spot that had been sent to the
TRLog bandmap from the Spotting position.
So, when the student arrived at the Transmitting position, the first thing I did
was to make a Q to show him the routine (same cheat sheets available at the
Transmitting position as at the Spotting position), and the speed with which it
can be transacted. While I thought they would have already noticed the
transaction speed at the Spotting position, it seems that they didn't. I guess
there's a difference in immediacy between being a voyeur and being party to one
side of the transaction.
Having made a demo Q, we swapped chairs. This was not as easy as it may sound,
given that the total floor area for seating 2 ops and 2 mentors was 8.75 x 6 ft.
I referred to it as the Rubik's cube manoeuvre. It's a good thing that I have
a window mounted fan permanently installed.
Next comes "Making The First Contact". I'm sure you all remember (other than
the CRS folks) the sweating and anxiety of your first CW contact when you didn't
even have a clue what the guy on the other end said and didn't care as long as
you sent your stuff OK and he said 73 at the end. (Do you remember saying
things like, "QSB is causing me to fade so 73 OM before you lose me"?) Well, it
seems to be easier on phone, but not much. The difference appears to be that
hearing what the other guy said is easier. Then again, "5914" isn't that tough
to remember long enough to log the "14" part.
So, I found a nice strong signal, pointed to the part on the S&P cheat sheet
that said VICTOR ECHO SEVEN FOX OSCAR in 14 pt bold and told the student to say
this when I gave the signal. So, I would give the signal, there would be a
pause before the student said anything, and we would hear another strong signal
calling the same station. Well, it isn't polite to interrupt someone so the
student didn't say anything. Following a discussion about this being a
competitive environment and that, while there is a certain etiquette which
should be observed, doing your best to beat out all other calling stations is
the expected norm, we tried again.
One thing I found was that it was best to have the student say VICTOR ECHO SEVEN
FOX OSCAR out loud to me before calling anyone. This made it a lot easier to
correct errors in the length of time between words, enunciation, saying some
syllables quieter than others, getting the voice level right, etc.
It wasn't too long before the first Q was made with High 5's all round, after
which we settled down to work as many as possible. Timing their calls remained
a problem for many of the students. Still, that will come with practice.
One student asked me to Run for a while so she could get a better sense of the
steps in the contest dance. This seemed to help her a lot in knowing when to
call and should probably be done for every student.
To maximize the time spent making Qs, I did the tuning. However, if we had some
unworked spots in the bandmap (supplied by the spotting position) I instructed
the student to hit F11 and we zipped through the bandmap. I also wrote down the
calls for them to type in as they don't know the phonetic alphabet. We'll hit
that harder in a future session.
One of the things I wanted the students to experience was making contacts off
the continent. Well, conditions were great and Eu was pounding in for hours on
20. The students, of course, haven't a clue about how to tell what country a
ham is in from his call sign so I had good fun asking, "Do you have any idea
where that guy was?" and then pointing to the country window in TR where it
would say Germany, or Belgium or whatever. This generally got them pretty
excited and they would be watching that window whenever they typed in a call,
often with expressions of amazement. In one case, I barely got the VOX turned
off in time as one student, after making the first Q of his life said, "Italy!!
- holy sh..!!" After a while they started to get blase when it was "only
Argentina".
The same process repeated on Sunday, starting at 8 am.
Altogether, we worked 53 different countries. Best DX was ZS4 which isn't that
easy from my station.
Everybody appeared to enjoy the experience and I think that 3 or 4 were really
turned on. We'll see how many show up for SS SSB.
I had originally planned to have them try both S&P and Running. However, it
quickly became clear that their phonetic alphabet skills wouldn't be up to the
task so we stayed with S&P. A couple of students got to the point where they
were tuning the radio, making Qs and logging them, all on their own. I was
positively glowing with pride.
We were very fortunate that 10 and 15 were open for so long. Lots of DX, lots
of strong signals and not much QRM, at least, not much on 10 and 15. I was a
little worried that only 20 would be open and that the students would have
trouble picking out signals in all the QRM.
LESSONS LEARNED:
They seemed to like the antenna tour so I would do that again.
The hour at the Spotting position was very helpful in tuning them in to the
contest environment. Probably doesn't need more than 1 hour.
1 hour at the Transmitting position isn't enough. While S&P was within their
comfort zone, I don't think anybody felt sufficiently competent to call CQ and
deal with whatever came. One hour spotting and two hours transmitting would be
much better. Requires 3 op positions and 3 mentors, though. Pretty tough to do
at my QTH but maybe we could find another.
Don't expect them to do the tuning when at the Transmitting position as it takes
too much time away from the main event, which is making Qs.
Fill the bandmap so they can jump from spot to spot themselves.
They can do their own logging in S&P with some prompting.
Have the student say our call out loud a few times before calling anyone in
order to correct any errors in how he says it.
Maybe demo making 1 Q, get the students to make 2 or 3 Qs, demo Running to help
them understand when to make their calls, then turn it back to them for the
remainder of their hour.
SUMMARY:
It was a lot of work, I was beat by the time the last person left, and I missed
some of the best contest conditions we're likely to see for several years. Was
it worth it? You bet it was.
Are you getting a little tired of contesting? Try doing what we did. It's a
whole new experience and you'll help bring new blood into the game. Remember,
you don't get to leave until you've replaced yourself with at least 2 newbies.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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