[CQ-Contest] How do you get better?

[Dick Green WC1M]

I'm hardly the expert, but Randy's advice to practice strikes a note for me.

I tend to oscillate between working on antennas and equipment for a while,
then focusing on operating. Antenna work, especially tower building, and
maintenance of a complex station, can consume vast amounts of time and
energy. Seems like I've always got something new to try or something to fix.


But these activities distract me from getting on the air and practicing.
After building my first SO2R contest station in the late '90s, I jumped into
every contest I could for a while. This really helped me to develop better
operating skills. I feel like I was a better, more consistent operator back
then than I am now, primarily because I got on the air a lot more
frequently. The initial station had some significant handicaps (low
antennas, no stacks), and that actually helped me to work on digging weak
stations out of the mud.

But it soon became clear that I had reached a limit with the existing
antennas, and I entered a period in which I changed and supplemented the
configuration at least once a year, and often multiple times a year. My
focus on operating decreased, and with it the consistency of my performance.
Finally, a couple of years ago I bit the bullet and put up a 110' tower with
a 2-el 40 and a stack of 4-el SteppIRs. The complexity of the station
increased dramatically, and the whole project took a huge amount of time to
design, acquire parts, build and refine. I just didn't have the time or
energy to do that and operate in a lot of contests, so I ended up just doing
the big CW contests (CQ WW, ARRL DX, WPX CW and IARU.) While I'm getting out
a *lot* better these days, my operating skills have sunk below where they
were earlier this decade. Well, the lack of sunspots and living at high
latitude have something to do with it, too :-) But I'm definitely not
getting on the air enough, doing simulator sessions or practicing sending by
hand. 

It's time for the pendulum to swing the other way. I've tried very hard to
resist the temptation to tweak my current antenna system. It's better
strategy to focus on operating until I can no longer overcome the
limitations of the antennas on a particular band (projects for 80m and 160m
are undoubtedly in the cards.) One or two contests is not enough to make a
definitive assessment on antennas anyway.

I don't think there's much doubt that Randy lives in a magical radio
location. After all, he was included in the "loudest on 20m" group for this
past CW WW SSB, along with K3LR and KC1XX, and "only" has 5/5 at 100'/50',
compared with massive stacks at the supermultis. Similarly, the rest of
Randy's antenna configuration is only about average for serious single-ops
in New England. Nothing over 110'. But it's clear that Randy's operating
skills are incredible, with a filter between his ears second to none. I've
heard the tapes. His ability to time openings, run at high rate for hours,
find and work massive numbers of mults, and juggle two radios is nothing
short of astounding. I'm sure he wasn't born with that capability (except
for the built-in filter :-) and has developed those skills through many
years of practice.

While aluminum and copper in the air can and does make a big difference, at
the end of the day I believe that operating skill is the ultimate weapon in
contesting. It takes a lot of time and practice to acquire, so it's
important to balance the time invested in building versus practicing.

73, Dick WC1M

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Randy Thompson K5ZD [mailto:k5zd at charter.net]
> Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 8:25 AM
> To: cq-contest at contesting.com
> Subject: [CQ-Contest] How do you get better?
> 
> "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" the guy asked his cab driver.  The
> reply,
> "Practice. Practice. Practice."
> 
> I think we all can acknowledge that practice is an important part of
> learning and improving any skill.  Sports players practice, sometimes
> for
> years.  Kids learning musical instruments practice.  Very few people
> are a
> "natural" who can just pick something up and be instantly good at it.
> 
> Why does no one ever talk about practice with regard to radio
> contests?
> 
> I find the SS CW contest is the best single thing I can do to be ready
> for
> WW CW.  Why?  Because it lets me practice my SO2R techniques.  After
> doing
> SS CW, I find I can sit down in WW CW and immediately go into SO2R
> mode
> without much thought or effort.
> 
> Other ways to practice in radio contests:
> 
> - Start at the bottom of the band and see how fast you can search and
> pounce
> your way to the top.  Then go back to the bottom and do it again.  The
> first
> time is about knowing how to acquire the next signal and dump in your
> call
> (or decide to keep tuning).  The second pass is the valuable one.  It
> helps
> you practice call sign recognition, duping skills, and how to dig
> between
> the fast loud guys.
> 
> - Work a QSO party or smaller DX contest that is focused on one area.
> See
> if you can work every station you hear from that area. Again, this
> helps you
> practice recognizing signals from a target area and duping skills.
> 
> - Work Field Day running high power.  No better simulation for
> practicing
> running skills.  :)
> 
> - Work RTTY contests to learn SO2R skills.  In RTTY, the computer is
> doing
> the brain work and the QSOs have a fairly consistent timing and
> pattern.
> This frees you to practice the keyboarding skills of jumping between
> the two
> logging windows.  For even higher level of practice, try running on
> two
> bands at the same time (while never transmitting on two bands at
> once).  The
> goal is to do it so smoothly that no one listening can tell what you
> are
> doing!
> 
> - Search and pounce in a contest using low power.  Almost everything I
> learned about busting pileups came from my early years in ham radio
> with 100
> watts and wires in trees.  You take a different approach when you are
> not
> the loudest guy in the pileup.  Learn that different approach and then
> be
> amazed when you apply it while running a KW!
> 
> - W4AN used to do work in his shack with two radios turned on
> listening to
> two different stations.  He would practice copying both.  You probably
> won't
> be able to copy solid on both, but you will learn how to quickly shift
> focus
> back and forth.  The goal is to get this skill happening without
> thinking.
> 
> - Get on the air between contests and make some QSOs.  Nothing helps
> your CW
> sending more than having to think and send at the same time.  :)
> 
> Most of all, have fun!
> 
> Randy, K5ZD
> 
>