[CQ-Contest] SS CW Secrets #6

[Tree]

This posting will mostly answer some questions that I have received over the
past few days.  I will talk a little about bandmaps and checking your 
feedlines.

K3FT writes:

> And then, of course, there is that old adage - most well known in the real
> estate business world..

> 'Location, Location, Location'

> If you are VY1JA or similiar.. you will be wanted no matter what band you
> choose to operate! Of course, with every upside, comes a downside, and his
> downside is the Aurora Borealis!  Pretty to look at... but oh.. such a
> signal sucker....:-)

Well, location has two elements - how well can you work lots of people, and 
how rare is your ARRL section.  Being in a rare section certainly is an 
advantage because many people are motivated to obtain a clean sweep.  This
attention often results in pileups during the times you have good propagation.

The reason VY1JA doesn't win the contest is that there are long periods of 
time when nobody can hear him.  He can hear you just fine... but his signal
doesn't make it far enough south.

KP4 or KP2 are great QTHs because they not only have pretty good propagation
properties, but you are also a rare multiplier.  

Chris, KL9A writes:

> Keep these secrets coming... just once in my life I'd like to be able to say
> I've done an entire SS.  What do you have to stay motivated on SATURDAY, not
> just sunday?  :)

Wow - the young people are very impatient.  Most of us old farts don't have  
a problem being motivated on Saturday.  The prime motivation on Saturday is 
seeing if you can meet your goal for the number of QSOs you want to make
in the first 12 hours of the contest.  If you are finding it hard to keep
focused before about 0600Z, then either you really aren't interested in
this contest, or your rate is lower than it should be.  The first 9 hours
of the contest pretty much is a rate-fest.

John, K4BAI makes the following comment about QSK:

> And one of the most important things you failed to mention, but I think 
> it is implied, is that you MUST have full QSK.  You don't really know 
> what is going on on your frequency if you are using VOX keying and you 
> can waste valuable time transmitting at the same time as the station you 
> are working (or the station you thought you were working).  I know that 
> complicates SO2R work, but, at least for the SO1R guys, QSK is almost 
> essential.

> Many good ops have not come to understand that.  

Well, I guess I am one of those good ops.  There are really two schools
of thinking here, and I think it gets down to personal taste.  I have 
used QSK back in my CW traffic handling days, but I find it hard to use
in a contest with two radios.  I am sure that there are times where it
would be helpful to hear what is happening on my transmitted frequency,
but to be honest, I haven't been able to afford amplifiers that would
support QSK so it isn't an option anyway.

John continues:

> K4PJ, ex K4LPW and W3DGM, was the first contester to impress upon me
> the importance of QSK in contesting.  (I also use it in every day
> operating.)  He was absolutely right in my opinion.  Too often, when the
> VOX drops out, you get something on the frequency from the station you
> think you are working, but you only get part of it.  With QSK, you know
> he is transmitting as soon as he starts and you can figure out if he is
> actually working someone else, or if he missed part of what you were
> trying to send. You will waste less time with queries to this station
> and figure out quickly if you should ignore him and go on to the next
> one.  (This also gives you a clue that you should open up your filter to
> get this guy when he next calls you off your frequency. You also hear
> the QRM start up as soon as it does and you can much more easily figure
> out what is going on on your frequency than if you are completely deaf
> to the frequency while you are transmitting.

So there you go.  I won't dispute that using QSK will improve your 
efficiency, if you have the right equipment for it and it doens't distract 
you from your two radio activities.  However, I am not sure I would position 
this as a "MUST" have in order to do well in the SS.

Bob, AA0CY writes:

> What secrets and suggestions can you provide for those whose
> goal is solely a clean sweep, especially for those whose
> stations don't even make it into the little pistol category?

Obviously getting a clean sweap using packet it a lot easier than not 
using packet.  However, I feel that it isn't very gratifying either.

If you are not using packet and the clean sweep is your ONLY goal, I
am not sure the strategy is all that much different than it is to 
maximize your score.  There are mults that are easier to work if you
are CQing.  I think the best approach is a balanced one using two 
radios - one CQing and one looking for those mults.

Even if you are down to your last mult, this still might be the most
effective strategy.

If you only have one radio, then it is a lot harder to know what to
do.  I guess you would need to alternate between CQing and S&Ping to
maximize your exposure.  As you get down to the last few mults, are
probably more likely to find them S&Ping.

Another e-mail I got was from someone who was concerned about having me 
suggest speeding up your CW to indicate that you heard another station
calling.  The point is taken.  You do have to be careful doing this and
if someone called you at 24 or 26 WPM, it probably isn't a good idea to
speed up to 38 WPM while sending the exchange.  You should only do this 
if you are confident that the station you are working will be able to
copy at the higher speed.

John, W4AU writes:

> I think your series of SS hints has been great. One thing I hope you will 
> cover is how (if it is possible) to use the bandmap feature of TR to best 
> advantage, even if your are not cheating (using packet).

Well, that is a good of an idea for today's secrets as any.  First off, the
bandmap feature isn't a TR exclusive feature, so the discussion will talk 
about bandmaps in a generic sense.

For those of you that haven't seen a bandmap, it is a display that shows 
a list of frequencies, with callsigns next to them.  The entries of the band 
map typically come from "dupe checks" you have made while turning around the 
band.  It can also get information from packet.  

The main thing the bandmap can do for you is to help you more quickly 
determine if a station you have just tuned in is a dupe of not.  

One feature that might be a TR exclusive is that the bandmap will show
you the received information for a station that you just tuned in without
any keystrokes.  So, if you have K7RAT in your bandmap on 14037.2 and
you tune in a loud signal on that frequency and hear "67 ORE", you can
see that it is probably still K7RAT there and you can move on.  

Another piece of data in the bandmap is some kind of time information so
you can see how old the bandmap entry is.  In TR, this is done with 
color coding.  This information paints a visual picture of what parts
of the band you have recently tuned, and which ones you haven't explored
for awhile.  To use this feature, you will need to update entries that
already exist in the bandmap when you tune across them again. 

If you are comfortable with the bandmap, it helps improve your S&P 
efficiency by decreasing the amount of time it takes to determine if you
have already worked at station, and helping you see what parts of the band
you haven't looked at in awhile.  It also gives you the ability to come
back to a specific station that might be hard to work with the current
conditions.  You can then easily find the station to try again later.

A necessary bandmap feature if you are using two radios is for it to
be available for the second radio so you can see it while CQing on your
run band.  Otherwise, you might need to network two computers together
and use one for your S&P activity and the other for CQing.

One of the things I started doing last weekend is checking my antennas 
and really working hard to make sure everything is up to snuff.  The
first test you need to do is with minimal power - best done with one
of the handheld SWR meters.  Often a bad connection will be "fixed" if
you pump some power through it.  These connections will often unfix
themselves in the middle of receiving an exchange.  If you see a bad
SWR - search for the root cause.  Look for bad connectors, or connections.

Once you have everything working at micropower, then you can put full
power in and make sure things stand up.  Listen with the 2nd radio and
see if you hera any garbage that might indicate some arcing somewhere
or other interference between bands.  Make sure your coax's are well
marked and can easily identify which is which during the heat of battle.

73 Tree
tree at kkn.net