CQing
Ray Rocker
rrrocker at rock.b11.ingr.com
Mon Jul 25 15:10:43 EDT 1994
> Am I the only one who thinks that a station who calls more than 12
> unanswered CQs should give up his frequency to whoever calls him
> on it?
Hmmm, on 40 CW in Sweepstakes this would be a good idea. I mean, there does
come a point when there's just no one else to work. However, it wouldn't
apply very well to the 10 meter contest at sunspot lows, where 12 unanswered
CQs might be commonplace...
This could also be read as "weaklings shouldn't CQ" which would fly in the
face of the preaching to the equalization proponents about how they should
just have fun and not worry about their score. After working all the CQers
on a given band I'd rather call CQ with only sporadic responses than just
sit there. Unless, of course, Beavis and Butthead is on, but I digress. My
point is that for a weakling station it's a big thrill to get their CQ TEST
actually answered by DX, even if it takes 12 or more tries...
-- ray WQ5L rrrocker at ingr.com "the view from ground level"
>From eric%modular.UUCP at cs.arizona.edu (Eric Gustafson) Mon Jul 25 20:02:35 1994
From: eric%modular.UUCP at cs.arizona.edu (Eric Gustafson) (Eric Gustafson)
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 94 12:02:35 MST
Subject: UA9BA's defences...
Message-ID: <9407251902.AA21948 at modular>
Yeah, you are probably right. It was an unnecessarily large brush. I am
just so fatigued from hearing all the other whining that our society seems
to be generating these days... Sorry
73, N7CL
>From DFREY" <HARRIS.DFREY at IC1D.HARRIS.COM Mon Jul 25 20:16:14 1994
From: DFREY" <HARRIS.DFREY at IC1D.HARRIS.COM (DFREY)
Date: 25 Jul 1994 14:16:14 EST
Subject: SprINT de K4XU
Message-ID: <QCY2.DFREY.1782.1994 0725 14 16 14 16>
It was the most frustrating experience in contesting ever. Never
did get LOG to accept dupes on S&P. No instruction mentions
hitting TAB twice. #@%!!! LOG would lock up and I had to give it
a three finger salute. My appologies to any who thought I was
retarded. I could have done better with a postit note and a
crayon. Quit after 45 Qs in 80 minutes.
There otta be a panic switch to get LOG out of lock-up like that
...and an option to turn Dupe checking completely OFF.
W6 was loud but even my trusty TH3 fixed east at 30' could barely
hear the east coast. 40 was never there. Life in the Black Hole.
Dick, K4XU dfrey at harris.com
>From jholly at hposl42.cup.hp.com (Jim Hollenback) Mon Jul 25 20:38:47 1994
From: jholly at hposl42.cup.hp.com (Jim Hollenback) (Jim Hollenback)
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 12:38:47 -0700
Subject: Grid squares
References: <n1436986664.78101 at smtp.esl.com>
Message-ID: <9407251238.ZM26499 at hpwsmjh.cup.hp.com>
On Jul 25, 11:24am, Tim Coad wrote:
> Subject: Grid squares
> 1. Sending the grid square in the exchange will be embraced by the camp that
> feels the current exchanges are not meaningful. Most of the time you will not
> be able to guess someones grid square. I ran a couple of hundred JA's on six
> meters one night and was amazed at how many different grids squares were
> coming back to me.
If, and only if, the grid squares count for something. If CM97, (or whatever
my square is) merely replaces 5NN or 59, what is more meaningful about the
exchange? Otherwise I feel we have replaced one meaningless exchange with
another. It might be interesting on a personal note to see how many different
squares you worked.
> 2. More Mults. Everybody loves mults.
Yeah, talk about mega-scores and blowing all records to *ell. Sure would
drive the software vendors nuts. It would be an interesting twist.
> 3. Instead of going by call districts, You might hear DX stations saying
> "Stations in DM grids call now". (Wont matter if you are a 3 living in 4
> land.)
Most interesting crowd control I ever ran across was last letter. Not last
two, but last letter. A fair sized pileup went to at most a couple each time.
All were quickly worked, and those who did not understand the concept were
publicly chastized.
Jim, WA6SDM
jholly at cup.hp.com
>From Steve Harrison <sharriso at sysplan.com> Mon Jul 25 21:34:22 1994
From: Steve Harrison <sharriso at sysplan.com> (Steve Harrison)
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 16:34:22 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: CT VER 8.XX scoring
Message-ID: <Pine.3.87.9407251633.A10017-0100000 at eagle>
Ken, a hint (also to all other users of CT and WordPerfect). After doing
WRITELOG, you can import *.ALL (or any other band log, for that matter)
into WordPerfect 5.0 or 5.1 and set the font to Courier 12 point. This
will automatically make the entire log come out correctly (except for
some page breaks, which is because CT inserts automatic page breaks).
Next, turn on page numbering (if you turn on page numbering BEFORE
setting your desired font, the page numbers will be in the prior font!
NOW you know why your page numbers never look right!).
In editing the log, you will find that you will probably have to edit the
headers on each page (you can also set WP to do auto-replace of the
headers) to remove such ridiculous things as Multi-Single (in FD???!!) and
maybe the bands and modes (*.ALL is your allband log!). Otherwise, other
editing will only be fixing typing mistakes when somebody typed the wrong
thing, such as a section abbreviation that CT did not like or that is
incorrect, like SD for San Diego instead of SDG. Obviously, since there
are no multipliers in FD, you can do this in your word-processor's log
without affecting your score!
You can then either call in another portion of your log such as the dupe
sheets, or you can save and do dupe sheets separately. I prefer to create
one big file with everything all together. Courier 12 also works well for
dupe sheets, although CT obviously only creates 60-line pages;
therfore, Courier 10 works OK for dupe sheets, too, and Courier 12 just
leaves some extra space at the bottom of the page. On dupe sheets, you
can delete the very first character on each page, which I believe is an
ASCII character to switch your pin-head printer into and out of
compressed-print; if you print using a laser printer, you won't need that
character and can delete it (if you don't delete it, it will show up on
the dupe sheet!). You will find another such character immediately in front
of the first call on the dupe sheet, and can omit it for laser printing,
as well.
I have never succeeded in laser-printing the breakdown sheets correctly;
all of the columns get skewed no matter what font I use. Since they
aren't needed for log submissions, it doesn't matter anyway. The same
goes for VHF QSO Party grid multipliers; the columns get skewed using a
laser printer.
Finally, the summary sheet prints fine in either Courier 10 or 12. However,
the format of the CT summary sheet is nowhere near the required
"close-facsimile" of the ARRL's summary sheet, so why bother? If you don't
have a copy of the ARRL's summary, you can get it by FTPing to
<oak.oakland.edu>, in the subdirectory /pub/hamradio/arrl/infoserver;
look for the file "FD.FRM" which is the FD summary sheet, and which includes
all of the bonus point categories.
I'm sure I've left out a couple of other editing things, but the above
covers the basics. It will take you a number of hours to do a complete
editing job, especially if you have several thousand QSOs and a lot of
corrections to make in the log sheets. When you first pull in the log and
after WP converts it to WP format, immediately save it to something so
when you screw it up irretrievably the first couple of times, you can
save a few minutes by throwing-away the messed-up log and retrieving the
original. As you do your editing and before you do any major editing change,
save it again so you don't have to restart it from the beginning in the
event of a catatrophe (for WP/DOS, this is done easily with F10).
Word for Windows sucks, and will NOT import non-Word files with columns such
as log sheets without totally skewing the columns. This happens because
Word uses some weird formula to automatically calculate character spacing
based upon the width of the character. I always use full justification,
which may be why the spacing gets screwed up. I haven't tried using only
left-justification; that may avoid the column skewing, but I strongly
doubt it. Don't even waste your time trying to use Word for logs. It may
be that if CT wrote the logs using indent instead of blank spaces to
separate columns, it would be possible to use Word easily. It may even be
possible to do a "search-replace" to replace column spaces with indents.
If anybody else has problems using WP 5.0 or 5.1 (DOS only) for CT logs,
I'll be happy to try to help. 73, Steve KO0U/4 <sharrison at sysplan.com>
>From fish at crl.com (Bill Fisher (KM9P) Concentric Systems, Inc.) Mon Jul 25 22:21:58 1994
From: fish at crl.com (Bill Fisher (KM9P) Concentric Systems, Inc.) (Bill Fisher KM9P Concentric Systems, Inc.)
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 14:21:58 -0700
Subject: Exchanges
Message-ID: <199407252121.AA19109 at mail.crl.com>
>> Subject: Grid squares
>> 1. Sending the grid square in the exchange will be embraced by the camp that
>> feels the current exchanges are not meaningful. Most of the time you will not
>> be able to guess someones grid square. I ran a couple of hundred JA's on six
>> meters one night and was amazed at how many different grids squares were
>> coming back to me.
>If, and only if, the grid squares count for something. If CM97, (or whatever
>my square is) merely replaces 5NN or 59, what is more meaningful about the
>exchange? Otherwise I feel we have replaced one meaningless exchange with
>another. It might be interesting on a personal note to see how many different
>squares you worked.
I would disagree with this completely. There is absolutely no way for the
log checkers to do a quality job of who can copy exchanges given the current
format. If the exchange were grid square, age, social security number or
whatever.... Then we have an exchange that nobody can predict... until the
database is created by EA or CC.
Change the CQ format to 599 GRID and we'll see who can copy the code and who
can't!
73
---
Bill Fisher, KM9P
Concentric Systems, Inc. (CSI)
404-442-5821 Fax 404-667-1975
>From lvn at fox.gsfc.nasa.gov (Larry Novak) Mon Jul 25 22:27:18 1994
From: lvn at fox.gsfc.nasa.gov (Larry Novak) (Larry Novak)
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 94 17:27:18 EDT
Subject: Attitude Impaired
Message-ID: <9407252127.AA05937 at fox.gsfc.nasa.gov>
> Eric N7CL wrote:
>
> Who cares if W5WMU has a tremendous antenna farm _and_ runs 43 KW or
> whatever. It only affects how well he does, not how well I do. I prefer
> to worry about things that affect how well I do. Those are the things I
> can take pride in doing something about.
I think Eric has exactly the right answer. If you're in the contest to
be number one and nothing else will do, you should find something
better to do with your time. What we all should be doing in these
contests, even if we're "serious" about them, is to do the best we can
with what we have. In the end, if you're happy with your performance,
that is something to be proud of. It isn't any fun if we don't keep
improving, but let's use the correct standard of measurement.
Larry, K3TLX
>From eric%modular.UUCP at cs.arizona.edu (Eric Gustafson) Mon Jul 25 22:35:33 1994
From: eric%modular.UUCP at cs.arizona.edu (Eric Gustafson) (Eric Gustafson)
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 94 14:35:33 MST
Subject: contest summer blues & other reflector poetry
Message-ID: <9407252135.AA23283 at modular>
Is anyone saving this stuff? Do we have a contest reflector "Deaf Poets
Society"? It would be a shame to let all this talent go unpublished. Keep
it up folks, this makes the reflectors easier reading.
73, Eric N7CL
>From oo7 at astro.as.utexas.edu (Derek Wills) Mon Jul 25 22:49:21 1994
From: oo7 at astro.as.utexas.edu (Derek Wills) (Derek Wills)
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 94 16:49:21 CDT
Subject: Attitude Impaired
Message-ID: <9407252149.AA12600 at astro.as.utexas.edu>
>> Eric N7CL wrote:
>> Who cares if W5WMU has a tremendous antenna farm _and_ runs 43 KW or
>> whatever. It only affects how well he does, not how well I do. I
>>prefer to worry about things that affect how well I do. Those are
>>the things I can take pride in doing something about.
>I think Eric has exactly the right answer. If you're in the contest to
>be number one and nothing else will do, you should find something
>better to do with your time. >Larry, K3TLX
So what you guys are saying is that it's quite OK for someone to run 10 KW
or more in a contest and beat you, and presumably it's OK for someone to
beat you by manufacturing a QSO for every couple of real ones? Or tape
the contest and figure out the exchanges when they are more awake? Or use
packet spots in the unassisted class? This is all OK?
If I lose to someone who has a tremendous antenna farm and/or is a better
op than I am, I have no complaints. If I lose to someone who runs "only
6 dB" more than legal power or makes up QSOs or does anything else illegal,
I think I have a complaint.
If I spent a lot of time, effort and money going halfway round the world
for a contest and was then beaten by someone doing some or more of the
above, you bet I would worry about it.
And now we're told that doing all this stuff is The American Way, ignoring
the petty rules? I'm really amazed. I guess you think it's OK for other
people to drive drunk and/or drive at 90 mph as long as you're not actually
doing it yourself at the time?
Derek AA5BT, G3NMX
oo7 at astro.as.utexas.edu
>From Trey Garlough <GARLOUGH at TGV.COM> Mon Jul 25 22:53:37 1994
From: Trey Garlough <GARLOUGH at TGV.COM> (Trey Garlough)
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 14:53:37 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: CT VER 8.XX scoring
Message-ID: <775173217.511097.GARLOUGH at TGV.COM>
> To: "Kenneth G. Kopp" <0006485696 at mcimail.com>
> CC: CT-User <ct-user at mlo.dec.com>, "CQ-CONTEST at tgv.com"
> <CQ-CONTEST at tgv.com>
Just a quick reminder for everyone: Please do not cross-post to multiple
lists. When composing a message, please consider which list it is most
appropriate for, then post it to that list only. And as Bartles and James
would say: "Thank you for your support."
--Trey, WN4KKN/6
>From oo7 at astro.as.utexas.edu (Derek Wills) Mon Jul 25 22:58:37 1994
From: oo7 at astro.as.utexas.edu (Derek Wills) (Derek Wills)
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 94 16:58:37 CDT
Subject: contest summer blues & other reflector poetry
Message-ID: <9407252158.AA12912 at astro.as.utexas.edu>
>Is anyone saving this stuff? Do we have a contest reflector
>"Deaf Poets Society"?
This is a pun, right? Deaf vs Dead? I can well imagine that many
of them are deaf and have never listened to their own poetry.
>It would be a shame to let all this talent go unpublished.
I think "unpunished" is the word you were looking for.
A better idea would be to close down the reflector in the summer
when there are fewer contests and too much incentive to post
frivolous stuff. I should know.
Derek AA5BT, G3NMX
oo7 at astro.as.utexas.edu
More information about the CQ-Contest
mailing list