[CQ-Contest] Spotting Errors

[Fabian Kurz]

Spotting errors and such things can get even worse:

My callsign (DJ1YFK) is obviously about as bad as it gets for CW
contesting. There are only very few DJ-callsigns with
three-letter-suffixes and to make things even worse, mine ends in K.
Of course it's also terribly long with 86 dot-lengths. It is
frequently miscopied as DJ1YF (obviously, most of the time), DJ1YRK,
DJ3YFK and a variety of other less frequent variations.

Can it get even worse? Yes: DJ1YF is a valid callsign and that guy
recently got a little more active in contesting. I worked him a few
times recently, including in this CQWW (0-pointer, but it was fun to
be called by my "alter ego").

There have been several spots for "DJ1YF" on the cluster last weekend,
all resulted in a string of QSOs, mostly dupes. That's not so bad for
me, but I suppose the real DJ1YF got a lot of "QSO B4" replies when he
called stations. Either because they miscoped my callsign or because
they thought it was DJ1YFK calling, and they missed the last letter
for some reason.

Nowadays it's easy to get a "vanity call" in DL (although there is no
official vanity programme like in the US) but I really don't want to
give up my call. Guess I'll use it as a comfortable excuse for my poor
contest results for the next few decades :-)

(This also brings up the topic of the 'perfect' CW callsign. After
many years of intensive research, mainly with RufzXP, I have not come
to a definite conclusion yet why some callsigns are easy to copy at
ridiculous speeds and others are simply impossible...)

73,
-- 
Fabian Kurz, DJ1YFK * http://fkurz.net/