[CQ-Contest] 6 Total Newbies & 4 Novices set to terrorize SS SSBparticipants as M/S at VE7FO

[Jim Smith <jimsmith@shaw.ca>]

You may remember that I unleashed 11 total newbie, no-ticket ops in CQ 
WW SSB.  Well, 4 of them are coming back at the novice contester level 
and they must have talked a lot about how much fun they had in WW as 6 
other licence class participants signed up as newbies for SS.

The newbies will get exactly the same instruction as the WW newbies got 
while the novices will actually start getting into it in a way that 
will, I hope, get the rate up a bit. 

When a novice arrives he will, as before, spend one hour at the spotting 
position.  However, this time he'll be expected to generate a 
significant number of spots for the run op.  If I can get everything set 
up in time, he'll also be picking spots off the cluster, checking to see 
if they are audible here, and passing those along as well.

After his hour of spotting he moves to the Run position.  This time, 
instead of just S&P, he'll be coached on running, as well as working 
spots from the bandmap and returning to the run frequency.  This will be 
a challenge as they don't know the phonetic alphabet well.  I did 
provide them with stuff they could use to practise logging and using 
phonetics but I doubt that many will have had the time to do it.  
However, the Run coach will decode the phonetics for them so they can 
complete the Q without too much fumbling.

It'll be interesting to see how they meet the challenge of the SS 
exchange.  I'll introduce the exchange to them by pulling out an old 
ARRL Radiogram pad, running them through the header and showing how the 
SS exchange relates to emergency comm operator training.

So, if you run across one of my newbies or novices, please be patient.  
If you want to say something like, "Welcome to ham radio from (name of 
state or prov), it's a lot of fun."  That would be really great.

Maybe my guy who, making the first ever Q in his life, yelled "Italy!!!  
Holy sh..!!" will be a little calmer this time.

We'll be using the call VE7FO.

73 de Jim Smith   VE7FO


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