[CQ-Contest] How frequent to ID? Every QSO? No way!

[Jim Smith]

Hi Rich,

I'm in the "once every 3 Qs or so is FB" group.

If it's slow, I sign once per Q.  If it's busy I hit CTRL-V 3 and TRLog 
runs the little command file I've set up to ID once per 3 Qs and TRLog 
takes care of the counting.  When it slows down again I hit CTRL-V 1 and 
I'm back to once per Q.  If you don't like 3 but want 2 or 4 it's dead 
easy to do.  If you want, you can set it up so you can choose 2, 3 or 4 
or whatever.  In this way, I don't have to decide after every Q which TU 
message I want to send.  I just have to decide if it's busy or slow.

One pet peeve is that, when the flood of people sending QDC? or the like 
finally forces the run op to send his call, he sends the call once at 40 
wpm.  Even at 30 wpm one little blurt of QRM or QRN leaves you little 
the wiser unless you already know the calls of all the participants.

When I run into arrogance, such as I believe the lack of ID for long 
periods of time to be, I get very vindictive feelings and have been 
known to send CL? several times after each Q while hoping that others 
who feel the same way will chime in.  If enough people do this on a 
routine basis, the problem will vanish.  Of course, this is stepping on 
the people who use spots and know the guy's call.

73 de Jim Smith   VE7FO



Richard Ferch wrote:

>
> This means you should adjust your frequency of IDs to match the 
> reactions of other stations (size of the pileup, whether anyone is 
> asking for your call sign, and so on). This in turn means having to 
> make a decision at the end of every QSO. Towards the end of a 48-hour 
> contest, the extra mental effort these decisions require may take 
> their toll, and such an adaptive strategy may be hard to maintain 
> without making mistakes. Adopting a simpler non-adaptive strategy of 
> IDing every QSO requires no thinking at all (it is programmed into 
> your contest macros), and by the end of the contest this 
> simplification in the tasks required of the operator may be worth 
> quite a few QSO points because of reduced frequency of errors.
>
> 73,
> Rich VE3IAY
>
>