SS in the "Good Old Days".

[Alan Brubaker]

I operated my first SS in 1959 after upgrading from Technician to General.
As I remember it, the rule was that you could claim credit for a one point
QSO if you sent your exchange to a station, and received an acknowledgement
but for some reason did not receive his exchange (or vice-versa). This
could happen early in the contest when the QRM was especially heavy, or if
the propagation just faded or for any of other reasons. Back then, the SS
was 40 hours long, and took place over two weekends. The chances were good
that you could eventually find the station that you had the one point QSO
with and "finish up" the contact. It did not always happen, however. The
other thing that was different then was that the CW contest and the Phone
contest were separate, but they ran concurrently. Most of us operated in
the CW section back then. You had to have a good station to do very well
on Phone (mostly AM but some SSB). The exchange was somewhat longer back
then too. You were supposed to send the time and date along with the
information that we send now. My callsign back then was K6QPH. Now you
know why I changed it.

Alan, K6XO (about 200 QSOs in the '59 SS, 50 watts and a longwire).