[CQ-Contest] Wasting time

[Hank Greeb]

I'll bet a dollar to a donut that the "big guns" don't even bother 
reading this kind of trash.  (Note, I'm definitely a "little pistol" so 
I can say such things.  The nearest thing to "real contesting results" 
that I had was in Field Day during the 1980's when I tried my then-new 
HW-9 at class 1B-1Op battery, and placed 2nd or 3rd three years in a row 
nationally in class).   There are exceptions - but many (probably most) 
contest clubs focus 90+% of their energy figuring out how to slice a 
millisecond or two off each contact - they only place scant lip service 
to recruiting newcomers and "little pistols."

But, there are some tricks of the trade that it's hard to instill upon 
the newcomer.  For example,

1. Call CQ - don't just Search and Pounce.

For example, during the ongoing ARRL 160 M contest I invited members of 
a local emergency oriented club to activate their station.  I encouraged 
these ops to try making contacts.  I advised them to find a "fairly 
clear" frequency, call CQ and see what happens.  None of them took my 
advice.  At about 11 p.m. (0400z) they all gave up.  I got on, found a 
spot near 1870 KHz which was just below where phone ops were hanging 
out, and started a CQ sequence.  The rate meter went from 12 to 30 to 95 
(and maybe higher) for Q's/Hr in the last 20 minutes, and within one 
hour I made 81 Q's before giving up.  This was with a modest 100 watt 
station (Ten Tec Corsair II), a manual tuner of equivalent vintage, and 
a inverted V dipole of some sort @ about 70'.for antenna.   I managed to 
work the west coast (California & Washington) and a few other western 
states - they all answered me.

2. Call CQ at your speed, even if that speed is 10, 15, or 20 WPM.  I 
didn't pay that much attention to speeds which others were sending, 
because when I was operating I wasn't doing S&P, but in the CQ WW DX 
contest in a previous week I was operating QRP from home and found 
several folks doing 15 WPM or less while calling CQ.

3. Just drop your call when answering a CQ.  One fellow insisted on 
calling with the other ops call then our call.  He didn't make a contact 
for about 10 minutes, and then finally started "just dropping our call", 
and made several S&P contacts - a bit to his amazement.

4. If all else fails, get on near the end of a contest - AND call CQ.  
You'll be amazed at the number of folks who will answer, because, as Al 
sez, They'll be in a "Finding new stations to contact mode" having run 
their "CQ TEST" mode dry.

We're gonna be operating again from the same club station tonight after 
about 2300Z, so if you hear a CQ TEST DE W8xxx (xxx to preserve 
anonymity) coming from SW Michigan, running at around 10 to 15 WPM. do 
drop your call into the bucket.  It will (hopefully) be one of the 
neophyte ops who is trying to learn CW and contesting, trying to get 
over initial shyness and fright at being amongst all the "care less 
about li'l pistol"  big guns.

We all need to learn.  it's a sad commentary that most contest clubs 
don't do much "elmering."

73 de n8xx Hg

On 12/4/2010 9:07 AM, cq-contest-request at contesting.com wrote:
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2010 14:27:54 -0500
> From: "David Kozinn, K2DBK"<dkozinn at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Wasting Time
> To: al_lorona at agilent.com, Cq-Contest<cq-contest at contesting.com>
>
> Well put, from a fellow little pistol.
>
> I try to operate as efficiently as I can, but I'm nowhere near having to worry about losing a few Qs in an hour with triple-digits rates. For some contests, they do more in two hours (or even one) than I do for the whole contest.
>
> What some of the big guns forget sometimes (and I say "some", others are much better) is that without us little pistols they'd be done after the first hundred of so Qs working each other.
>
> Here's to the little pistol!
>
> 73,
>       David, K2DBK
>       k2dbk.com
>       k2dbk.blogspot.com
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 1:56 PM,<al_lorona at agilent.com>  wrote:
>
>> As a little pistol I must admit that a lot of what I read here can be intimidating. For instance, for years I have read the opinion that goes like this: such-and-such behavior wastes valuable time in a contest. The behavior in question is usually saying "Please copy...", or sending the other station's call sign before sending your own exchange, or any number of things that irk contesters who have little patience for such "wasteful" practices.
>>
>> Most of these statements are highly ironic. To see why, tune in to the last few hours of any contest, when stations can go several minutes on a frequency calling CQ without an answer but keep pushing the button anyway. I'm in no way begruding their right to call CQ;  I'm saying that if you add up all of the precious seconds "wasted" by those of us that say "please" or "QSL" or whatever, that "wasted" time doesn't even come close to the time you spend sitting on a quiet frequency looking for those last few contacts.
>>
>> In other words, most stations are not time-limited in most contests, they are 'finding-another-Q' limited.
>>
>> You may argue that it is worse to lose seconds in the first hours of the contest when rates are higher, than in the last hours when rates drop. This argument may have merit, but remember that presumably everybody is being
>> impacted more or less equally by the "wasters" and so all this does is change the point of peak rate (as well as the peak rate itself) for each participant. To me this is little different than everybody being affected by a solar flare. You may argue that if your goal is to set a new world record then any deviation from your precise idea of the perfect exchange has a greater negative impact and there I might agree with you, unless you find yourself pushing the button a lot at the end... in which case, maybe most contests are too long?
>>
>> I submit that most of the "wasted seconds" arguments are moot and belong on the Aargh! wiki page.
>>
>> Al  W6LX