[CQ-Contest] contesting tips

[John Laney]

Steve:

I don't know the source of your information that tuning from the top 
down is better for USB and the reverse on LSB.  Maybe my ears are 
different from that person's, but I think it is much easier to tune from 
the bottom up on USB and from the top down on LSB.  That is because you 
hear intelligible sound from the station first as you approach it.  You 
are tuning first to the intelligible sideband.  If you tune as your 
correspondent suggests, you hear nothing but garble until you are right 
on the spot where the station can be understood.  Most of the time you 
will tune past that spot and have to reverse and tune back.  You 
shouldn't have that problem if you tune toward the desired SSB and keep 
tuning until the voice sounds clear.

Just my experience of almost 50 years (even though some will tell you 
that they were all on CW, but that would be perhaps an exaggeration).

73,

John.