[CQ-Contest] Inspiration or ?

[Dick Green]

To me, the most attractive aspect of contesting is the potential to
continuously improve my operating skill. To some extent I was forced into
this by location and my YF, but it has become very enjoyable to see how high
in the standings I can go with antennas that are almost completely hidden in
or behind trees (none is higher than 70'.) So far, my scores are still going
up. In fact, UBN performance last year caused me to drop one or two places
in the major contests. Higher antennas aren't going to improve that as much
as more practice and experience will. Most people think you can't win with
modest antennas, but I'm not ready to accept that yet. I know that I have a
long way to go before my skills peak, and believing that I can actually win
keeps me highly motivated to keep improving. Besides, you never know when
K5ZD, K1AR, NT1N, KQ2M and W4AN, etc. will be operating at a multi or have
other commitments for the weekend -- one of these days the path to the top
could be wide open for someone with a modest station and a lot of operating
skill.

I'd like to see a balance between the coverage of high-dollar and low-dollar
stations. Good ideas can be had from both sources. For example, from looking
over big stations I learned that winning ops design their antenna systems
not just for gain, but for flexibility. I was then able to find low-cost
ways to make my station more flexible (low portable towers,  a tribander
with less F/B(!), more wires, beverages, etc.) Some of the switching
techniques used in the big multis can be adapted to low-cost SO2R stations,
too.

More articles about successful low-cost or restricted-space stations would
be most welcome. I'll bet the big guns could learn a thing or too from these
stations as well. For example, I'm building a relay box to share a DCU-1
between three rotors. This saves the cost of the control box on two of the
rotors, saves 500' of rotor cable, and let's me use a fancy controller with
presets on all three antennas. I don't know yet whether this will be harder
or easier to use than three separate controllers -- I'll find out in the
heat of battle, which is part of the fun.

But much as I like coverage of hardware, I'd really like to see more
emphasis on operating techniques and how to improve them.

73, Dick WC1M


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