Hello ya'll
I am John K5IUA and would like some input on how to improve my CW "Not
In Log" percentages.
I am an active and sometimes quite successful VHF/UHF contester which is
primarily SSB.
This past year I played in the CQWWCW contest and had a lot of fun. The
station here is rather minimal on MF/HF in that I run about 100 watts
into an inverted L (160, 20, 15), 4 square (40) and 5 elements on 10.
The logging program in use is CT and almost all of the CW is generated
by the computer.
All of my contacts were made in the search and pounce mode. I would tune
the bands and listen until I was fairly sure that I knew the call sign
of the station I wanted to work before transmitting. Some of the
contacts were with stations that were transmitting at speeds that I
could not read on their first call. It might take several tries before I
could understand their call. After determining the call I would try to
match their speed with the computer before I answered their call. Even
at the faster than comfortable speed I felt I would be able to copy my
call.
I "made" about 125 contacts of which 3 were Bad, all of which I can take
the blame for. The question for me though is why I had 25 NIL. Of the 25
there were 13 that apparently did not have my call correct and the other
12 did not have my call anywhere close in their logs.
The 13 showed up in the report that possibly were the result of typo
errors or other problems on the other end. It could also mean that I
thought I had heard my call correctly when in fact I did not. In cases
where I had heard my call incorrectly I would not send a report until I
had heard my call correctly.
The other 12 NIL's are the real puzzlers for me. Especially the one call
that I "worked" on 3 bands only one of which showed up in their log. The
other 2 were nowhere to be found!
What to do, what to do. By decreasing the NIL's on my end everyone's
score will increase, either by an additional QSO or by not having a
deduct.
Besides the obvious of increasing my CW skills what can or should I do
to lower the NIL's.
Good luck and good DX.
John - K5IUA
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