[CQ-Contest] Zero Beating

[Steve Harrison]

At 05:58 AM 6/1/2007 -0600, Dale Putnam wrote:
>I noticed this too, in folks calling in singles and in groups, from across 
>the spectrum of geography and bands. 
>I couldn't get a handle on why. It wasn't the "group" avoidance in many 
>cases. Sloppy habits? Too quick to call? Or simply rush to get the Q and 
>move on?--...   ...-- 
>Dale - WC7S in Wy

Not sure; but it seemed to me that way more folks were calling way off freq
during the WPX that I'd ever noticed before, even as recently as contests
like the NE QSO Party, or even the ARRL DX CW. It was a surprise and I
quickly learned to keep my audio filter's bandwidth opened much further
than I normally do during a contest.

Perhaps it had something to do with all the QRN that just about everybody
in the world was experiencing last weekend; while tuning around, they were
distracted by assorted static crashes from doing that "last little
tuning-tweaking" before calling someone else.

I could tell the Europeans were having lots of static crash trouble when
I'd call at one freq, get no reply, shift slightly, no reply, shift
slightly again, and still no reply. During the ARRL CW DX contest, I only
had to shift once or maybe twice before they'd hear me and reply. I think
this indicated they were able to use narrow filters during the quieter
winter months and as I shifted my frequency slightly, I'd eventually drop
into their listening "slot". But most of us probably used our wide filters
this past weekend in an effort to hear weak stations among the static
crashes and then nearly all of us were probly using wide filters by the end
of the test, as we encountered more and more stations calling us off
frequency.

Steve, K0XP