Ken Silverman@AIRTOUCH
11/11/97 12:26 AM
I have the (dubious) honor of using a 1x1 call in 2 contests.
After the first time I used it, I swore I would never use one again...
The first time I used it was in the CW Sprint (N6N). One would assume
that the people who enter the Sprint are fairly die-hard contesters
and would have no problem with the call. Wrong. People asked for
repeats at an amazing rate, and MANY times people would sit and wait
for the rest of the call, even though I had learned to send N6N twice
just to avoid that very problem. It also didn't help that N6NT and
other N6N_ stations were active. Most people thought I was one of
those guys who just hit the Escape key, or busted my call when sending
it.
I relearned what callsign recognition can do for you!
A USA 1x1 currently has no callsign recognition.
I was then invited to N6RO for CQP, where we were going to use N6O. I
tried very hard to persuade the group to use the well known N6RO, But
I was out voted. Amazingly, N6O did not require many repeats. People
got it. I wonder if the recent K4K and other DXpeditions had raised
the awareness of 1x1 callsigns?
So what did I learn from this? As Trey said, being loud is number 1.
Then go for callsign recognition (IMHO). I hope that I never use a
1x1 again... not worth it.
Kenny K2KW
PS: The other disadvantage is that you have to make up another batch
of QSLs... but I suspect that most cards will never find their way to
the correct user.
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