I imagine that a lot of casual operators cannot quickly change bands and may
not have much interest in doing so at the moment you sent your QSY request.
Perhaps you could just send QRV 28.025, etc occasionally between QSOs.
John KK9A / P40A
To:"'Hank Greeb'" <n8xx@arrl.org>, <cq-contest@contesting.com>
Subject:[CQ-Contest] PSY QSY???? Deer in the Headlights REDUX
From:"Martin Durham" <w1md@cfl.rr.com>
Date:Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:14:27 -0500
It's been interesting to sit back and watch how a thread morphs and meanders
from the original posting that George (K5KG) put out on 'what works' for
asking a station to QSY.
I was another of the operators at PJ4X during the ARRL CW contest last
weekend and I think a little more clarification is warranted to bring the
discussion 'back on track'.
We were operating as a M/M with four stations on the air at all times...so
we were either 10-40 or 20-160 depending on the time of day.
We were the RUNNING stations in all instances so we weren't 'interrupting
someone else's run to ask for a QSY to another frequency.
We were the ONLY PJ4 station on for the contest...so virtually every contact
we made was a MULTIPLIER for someone...
As I mentioned above, we were on 4 bands at all times and had a 'pretty
good' idea of what bands had propagation to where and when.
We had 7 total operators and several different techniques were in use for
asking people to QSY...some would ask only the loud and fast stations, some
would ask every station they worked. Some used Function keys pre-programmed
with a QSY message, some used the paddle (we had paddles at all four
positions). In my instance I used the function key to send the stations call
again first (to get their attention) then asked for a QSY either to 20 or
10m if I was on 15m. If I got a response I'd then send the QRG for the QSY
and alert the operator on the other band. If I didn't get a reply in 3-5
seconds I'd send TU PJ4X and move on to the next caller.
Towards the end of the contest (last 4-5 hours) we really ramped up the
effort to pass or move every station we could from 10-15-20-40 to try to
maximize our score. As it turns out looking at a SH5 analysis of the logs,
we were able to hold about a 250 per hour run rate in part due to the
assistance of all the stations that were willing to move to one or more
bands for us. The SH5 analysis also showed that we averaged about a 2.5%
'hit' rate on our attempts to pass stations from one band to another.
Overall, I think the analysis shows that it was successful as we did
experience an uptick in contacts made...and it was sustained for the last
4-5 hours of the contest.
So...the 'context' to George's question was (IMHO) more about how do we as a
M/M running stations increase the success rate of moving stations?
Lots of ideas and suggestions have been floated and most have merit in some
fashion. My own impression of our attempts at moving people mostly reflected
that the vast majority of contacts, (probably the casual contesters) simply
were not READY to copy a request to QSY after the 'normal' contest exchange.
Hope this adds some context to the original post...
73,
Marty
PJ4/W1MD
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