[3830] NA Sprint CW WB6BWZ QRP
WB6BWZ@ARRL.net
WB6BWZ@ARRL.net
Sun, 10 Feb 2002 23:47:04 -0500 (EST)
NA Sprint - CW
Call: WB6BWZ
Operator: WB6BWZ
Station: WB6BWZ
Power: QRP
QTH: GA
Summary:
Band QSOs Op Time
----------------------
80:
40: 1
20: 7
----------------------
Total: 8 Qs 5 Mults = 40
Club: South East Contest Club
Team: SSC #4
Comments:
Yaesu FT-817, 5 watts, top end-fed 73-foot Inverted-L "24-ga stealth antenna"
up 40 feet in trees, in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. WriteLog (manual mode).
First time in NA Sprint CW.
Before I entered this contest, I had committed to spend the weekend at an
out-of-state swim meet with close friends I hadn't seen in a year. My plan was
to be back home at least two hours before the contest.
Well, I couldn't work that plan very well.
Not when you have an 8-year old girl and 11-year old boy asking their parents
permission to be with you instead of them, pleading for you to stay whenever I
said I was leaving, making excuses for you to stay, etc.
Both children were in the swim meet. They were very excited that I had come to
see them participate. (When they were a lot younger, the children would ask for
me to tuck them into bed, read bedtime stories and say good-night prayers with
them.)
Back to the contest:
My clue that I wasn't mentally prepared was when my first computer entry showed
I didn't have the correct band set up. (I made this mistake before but I
reminded myself a few minutes BEFORE I sat at the rig, to double-check this
particular setup.)
Participating in the NA SSB Sprint the previous week helped me understand the
callsign and QSY rules. Without that experience, I would have felt very
intimidated in this contest.
I did hear several stations violate the QSY rule and not follow the recommended
callsign exchanges. I don't believe they did it intentionally. They probably
thought this was just another contest and decided to participate without
reading the rules.
The pace was very fast and furious with lots of top gun stations here, and then
gone, in an instant. That can be confusing for any station not understanding
the contest rules.
There wasn't much I could do score-wise in 1.5 hrs operating QRP with a 73-foot
wire stealth antenna. So my contacts were few while I decided to observe how
other contesters were operating and see the contest from a newbie's point of
view.
My suggestion for newbies (like me) with little or no Sprint experience who
felt overwhelm by the fast CW and/or high-powered stations is to work the bands
where most of the top guns aren't going after blood.
In my (Eastern) time zone, this means starting off on 40m and then QSY'ing to
20m when the majority of the stations are doing the reverse. This assumes that
you understand the basics of the callsign & QSY rules. For additional
assistance, see N6TR's tutorial, "The Sprint Survival Web Page"
<http://n6tr.jzap.com/sprint.html>, recommended by W4AN to the South East
Contest Club members.
The more efficient top gunners will be found on the quieter bands (about the
third hour into the contest), usually using their 2nd rcvr with automated
keyer, operating at a more reasonable CW speed to pick up what I call
"freebies" or "filler contacts."
My most memorable contact in this contest was working N6TR, close to the 3-hour
mark.
South East Contest Club (SECC)/Southern Sprint Coalition (SSC)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Worked N5RZ. "Heard but gone in a flash" were K4AAA, W4PA, K4NO, K0EJ.
Bill W4AN did a fantastic job of coordinating five SSC teams. One of his goals
were to encourage newbies to participate. The strategies shared by W4AN are
helping me understand how to be a better contester.
See you all in the next Sprint!
Hour 80M 40M 20M Total Cumm OffTime
D1-0200Z - - 5/4 5/4 5/4
D1-0300Z - 1/1 2/0 3/1 8/5
Total: 0/0 1/1 7/4
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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