[CQ-Contest] Field Day and CW

[David Riley]

I spent most of the evening hanging around calling CQ near the bottom of 40
and 80. I noticed two things in general about the QSO's I made.

First, I was running about 25wpm most of the time, but it seemed I had many
more stations answering me this year running below 20 wpm amd some all the
way down to 13 or 15 wpm. Is this because of the 5wpm maximum in exams now?
Maybe?

Second, there were some pretty bad ops out there that don't know what a
space is. I can adjust to some hams that are sloppy because they are using
an unfamiliar key or paddle, but that's still no excuse for running
everything together. Using my call N8IA as an example, I would hear
N8IAN8IAK. What the heck is that? N8IA? N8IAN? N8IAK? Sometimes I would have
to send QRZ not because of QRM, QRN or whatever, just to verify if I guessed
correctly on the call.

73

Dave - N8IA
Operated as N8KD 2B Mich