[CQ-Contest] CW Speed

[K0LUZ]

There seems to be an assumption that there are a number of hams who would
like to operate contests but are afraid of the fast cw speeds.  I agree that
speeds are getting faster.  Back in stone age times (for me ...... late
50's,  hand keys and semi-automatic keyers (bugs) were the norm and it is
tough to send 35 wpm on a hand key or a bug.  Someone mentioned that W4KFC
always sent at 20 wpm and that's probably right because that was consider
the normal 'fast' back in those days.  Then we went to electronic keyers and
then to memory keyers and the sending got faster.  And you know what???  The
operators got used to receiving faster too!  So now we have this layer of
hams who grew up through these transistions and can handle it and we have
the hams that have no idea how to get up to the speeds we now use.  That's
why I heard no more than 50 contacts with a check of 95 or later with  qso
contacts of over 1000.  So what to do?

Some things have been tried such as suggesting that these operators move up
to the high end of the band and have their own 'slow' contest and when us
speed demons go up there we are suppose to notch our keyers back to their
speeds.  Noooooooo   problem,  but then I don't hear hardly anyone up there!
So here are some possible conclusions:

1.	The newbies are afraid to call CQ
2.	The newbies don't really give a damn about contesting (Quake is better on
Internet)
3.	We aren't doing a very good job of promoting the 'slow zone'

If there are indeed plenty of people who 'want' to operate slowly,  then
there ought to be fun just working each other at the beginning of the
contest and then make sure they all understand that on Sunday afternoon and
evening,  there will be many more stations who were previously not listening
that high in the band that will respond to their cq's.

I guess we need to get our marketing division working on this!

73
Red
K0LUZ


-----Original Message-----
From: cq-contest-admin at contesting.com
[mailto:cq-contest-admin at contesting.com]On Behalf Of k7qq
Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 8:54 AM
To: CQ Contest
Subject: Fw: [CQ-Contest] CW Speed


Quack's    .02
I think that we are loosing Many newbies becauz of CW speed.  A friend and
his XYL both hams said that they got on during CQWW CW to try to work some.
The major problem, was they couldn't even get the call signs of the CQers  .
They both do CW around 15 wpm.
CW is a dying art and its going to have less and less of us to carry on,
I'm not a speed deamond. but when I call some stations that are CQing at 32
,  they seem to think they should come back to me at 40.  I do get the info
sometime but, that guy setting there trying to figure out his call and the
exchange info just got lost again.    I'm as guilty as the next guy in
cranking at 34/36 w/CQ SS, however I do slow down to the speed that somone
calls.

Last was KL7XX   78=WY  79=VE4   From  Illinois.
No fair changing the section in your logs now.
K7QQ/9


----- Original Message -----
From: "Zack Widup" <w9sz at prairienet.org>
To: <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, November 04, 2002 1:23 PM
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Unsportsmanlike?


> On Mon, 4 Nov 2002 tgstewart at pepco.com wrote:
>
> > That's unfortunate...
> >
> > However, it's hard to use a large CW contest like SS to start learning
> > Morse code at speed.
> >
>
> Sort of like getting your feet wet on your first DXpedition by going to
> Heard Island?
>
> I'd really like to go on a DXpedition some day, but I think I'll get some
> experience by going somewhere like Antigua, Bahamas or St. Kitts.  Perhaps
> a new contester could get his code speed up by participating in smaller
> contests.
>
> Then again, it's attitude that counts ... if you really want to learn
> something, you ignore the setbacks.
>
> 73, Zack W9SZ
>
> _______________________________________________
> CQ-Contest mailing list
> CQ-Contest at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
>
>


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