DER* & the DOMINOs - A Good Joke?

[KWIDELITZ at delphi.com]

I'd like to think I have as good a sense of humor as the next guy, but I'm
not sure this was a good joke, good, that is, for the Sprint.

I can imagine how this started. Tree, N6TR, suggests this CW Sprint be done
low power. Not a completely bad idea. A new challenge for the Sprint Elite.
There is some banter at the ol Cyberspace Bar & Grill. "Hey, I'll do it if
you do it!" Then some guy (maybe Derek, AA5BT, or were you an innocent
victim?) gets up on his barstool and says "Well, as long as we are going to
do low power, how about doing it with WEIRD NAMES." 

Caught up in the excitement, another of the Sprint Elite shouts, "Hey, lets
do it with weird CALLS and WEIRD names." "Yeah, someone was talking about a
Grateful Dead tribute. Let's use the band name members" "No, that's too
easy. Lets do DERIK and the DOMINOs." And then consensus. Club calls and
variations on Derrick (VE4VV, did they ask you for permission or were you an
innocent victim also?)

So why do I question if this was a good joke. If this was a one shot deal,
well, maybe it was a good joke. On the other hand, I believe this was
perpetrated by the Sprint Elite, the guys who make up the Top Ten box. I've
always taken the Sprints to be a contester's contest. If I can get 300 Qs in
the CW Sprint, it will say something about my abilities. Now, I struggle at
34 WPM, as many of you who have worked me in the Sprint know. I ask for a
lot of fills. I can be slow on the comeback. But I am serious about
improving. This is a difficult contest. If you don't have a clue about how
it works, you just can't make it. So I am concerned about drawing new blood
into this one. And if the Elite treat it as a joke, it may become a joke.
I think a guy trying CW Sprint for the first time this time out would be
somewhat turned off by the DER* variations. I would urge that this type of
thing be done in the INTERNET Sprint, not the real thing.

Anyway, here is my guess as to the team DER* & the DOMINOs:

KF4BTH, DERRICK
KA2AEV, DOMINO
VE4VV, DERRICK
KE6UCF, DERREC
KC7KMC, DERICK
KA6LAF, DERECK
WN4KKN, DOMINO
KC5OYM, DERRAC
KC5NSS, DERIK
KB0SRK, DEREC

73. Ken, AB6FO, KWIDELITZ at DELPHI.COM

>From Larry Tyree <tree at cmicro.com>  Sun Sep 10 19:08:38 1995
From: Larry Tyree <tree at cmicro.com> (Larry Tyree)
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 1995 11:08:38 -0700
Subject: DER* & the DOMINOs - A Good Joke?
Message-ID: <199509101808.LAA18607 at cascade.cmicro.com>

AB6FO writes and N6TR responds:

> I can imagine how this started. Tree, N6TR, suggests this CW Sprint be done
> low power. Not a completely bad idea. A new challenge for the Sprint Elite.
> There is some banter at the ol Cyberspace Bar & Grill. "Hey, I'll do it if
> you do it!" Then some guy (maybe Derek, AA5BT, or were you an innocent
> victim?) gets up on his barstool and says "Well, as long as we are going to
> do low power, how about doing it with WEIRD NAMES." 

Not exactly.  It was more like, "Let's do the sprint with low power and 
handkeys."

> Caught up in the excitement, another of the Sprint Elite shouts, "Hey, lets
> do it with weird CALLS and WEIRD names." "Yeah, someone was talking about a
> Grateful Dead tribute. Let's use the band name members" "No, that's too
> easy. Lets do DERIK and the DOMINOs." And then consensus. Club calls and
> variations on Derrick (VE4VV, did they ask you for permission or were you an
> innocent victim also?)

This is close.  Greek Gods seemed a little too conceited.  VE4VV was asked
to join the team, but he was already on one, and wasn't told any more about
it.  AA5BT was asked after K1KI dropped from the team (due to work travel)
but was QRL and couldn't join us.

> So why do I question if this was a good joke. If this was a one shot deal,
> well, maybe it was a good joke. 

It was, and it is.

> On the other hand, I believe this was perpetrated by the Sprint Elite, 

obviously it was, since the "elite" were the team members.

> always taken the Sprints to be a contester's contest. If I can get 300 Qs in
> the CW Sprint, it will say something about my abilities. Now, I struggle at
> 34 WPM, as many of you who have worked me in the Sprint know. I ask for a
> lot of fills. I can be slow on the comeback. But I am serious about
> improving. This is a difficult contest. If you don't have a clue about how
> it works, you just can't make it. So I am concerned about drawing new blood
> into this one. And if the Elite treat it as a joke, it may become a joke.
> I think a guy trying CW Sprint for the first time this time out would be
> somewhat turned off by the DER* variations. I would urge that this type of
> thing be done in the INTERNET Sprint, not the real thing.

Most of this seems to show that you are taking this thing too seriously.
As far as drawing new blood, that was part of the motivation.  This was
an exciting sprint, different from the rest, and it will be a fun writeup.
That helps draw new people into it.  About 3,000 people see the sprint
writeups.  About 200 of them get on the air.  The fact that Jeff almost
won this thing (maybe he did) with low power, one radio, a long call, and
a weird name, is cool stuff.  I don't think he was joking around!  I know
I was seriously working as hard as I could.

> Anyway, here is my guess as to the team DER* & the DOMINOs:
> 
> KF4BTH, DERRICK
> KA2AEV, DOMINO
> VE4VV, DERRICK
> KE6UCF, DERREC
> KC7KMC, DERICK
> KA6LAF, DERECK
> WN4KKN, DOMINO
> KC5OYM, DERRAC
> KC5NSS, DERIK
> KB0SRK, DEREC

Close.  There are two errors.

Now, can you match up the operators?

Tree N6TR


>From Trey Garlough <GARLOUGH at TGV.COM>  Sun Sep 10 19:46:55 1995
From: Trey Garlough <GARLOUGH at TGV.COM> (Trey Garlough)
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 1995 11:46:55 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: DER* & the DOMINOs - A Good Joke?
Message-ID: <810758815.790894.GARLOUGH at TGV.COM>

> I'd like to think I have as good a sense of humor as the next guy, but I'm
> not sure this was a good joke, good, that is, for the Sprint.
> 
> I can imagine how this started. Tree, N6TR, suggests this CW Sprint be done
> low power. Not a completely bad idea. A new challenge for the Sprint Elite.
> There is some banter at the ol Cyberspace Bar & Grill. "Hey, I'll do it if
> you do it!" Then some guy (maybe Derek, AA5BT, or were you an innocent
> victim?) gets up on his barstool and says "Well, as long as we are going to
> do low power, how about doing it with WEIRD NAMES." 
> 
> So why do I question if this was a good joke. If this was a one shot deal,
> well, maybe it was a good joke. On the other hand, 
> [more commentary omitted]

I wasn't involved in organizing this, so I can't tell you why it came
about, but I can explain why I chose to participate.

N6TR beat KR0Y in the February contest.  To my way of thinking, this
took the pressure off Jeff to win, as well as taking the pressure off
the rest of us to beat Jeff, giving us an opportunity to try something
different.  So when N6TR propsed (via email) that we operate the
September event barefoot, it sounded like a lot of fun.  Then there
was a proposal to "equalize" things in other ways, like having
everyone use 6-character callsigns and so on.

In essence, it was like a unilateral disarmament.  Once Tree had
gotten a core of 10 people together to organize a low power Sprint
team, then he sent a message out to the CQ-Contest mailing list
annoucning our intention of operating the contest low power, and a
bunch of the other big guys (K0RF, W0UA, K6LL) decided to come on
board, which was great!

The final arrangement that the core group settled on was:

o one radio
o low power
o one antenna per band 
o six letter call
o name must be variation of Derek
o no computer generated CW

Have I left something out?

> Anyway, here is my guess as to the team DER* & the DOMINOs:

Actually we were going to call it "Domino and the Dereks."  :-)

As a side note: There has been (to my great surprise) suggestion from
several places that there was something mean-spirited about this
activity.  This is something I honestly unable to grasp.  If anyone
would like to raise these issues in email to me (not to CQ-Contest), I
will gladly attempt to address them in a private discussion.

I did give some consideration to operating high power since much of
the competition had agreed to do a low power thing, but that seemed
incredibly lame.  Besides, I was looking forward to this being an 
educational experience.

Operating from the W6QHS/KK6QM location (thanks Dave and Barb!) the
setup was 204BA, 40m rotary dipole, and 80m inv V.  See you next time!

--Trey, WN4KKN/6