[CQ-Contest] Sweepstakes

[Scott Monks]

Zack (w9sz)
I had a limited amount of time for this one so I only made 163 QSO's but of 
those, every station I worked sent his callsign in the exchange at the
proper point.
I followed the same routine throughout: (Call of station worked) TU (serial
#) (prec) (MY CALL) (ck) (sec)Well, I think you were pretty lucky!  I invested about 10 hours in this (my first SS) and didn't make a single contact!!  

My cw speed is about 20wpm in a normal QSO, but with this style of exchange my speed goes down to about 13wpm because of the numbers.  I figured that I would go to the novice/tech section of the CW bands and work some slower stations there and just enjoy myself, also figuring that the high-speed cw people would hang out in the other areas, or at least give some room to us slower ones.

Was I stupid or what!?  Those portions of the band were wall-to-wall speed mills who wouldn't even take my slower calls!  I would camp on one, copying over and over until I had them down pat and know that their next serial would be s I wouldn't mess it up, but no one would ever come back to my calls!  I didn't hear a single person calling or answering at less than at least 25+wpm except for one person who tried to finish sending his info and a speedster just jumped right in on top of his exchange and began calling the other station--I don't know if the slower station got his exchange or not.  Finally I just gave up and went to the top of the band and did some cw ragchewing.

However, on the other topic, I did a LOT of copying during my 10 hrs. and only heard stations giving their calls in EVERY exchange, although I might have been listening to different operators.  I also heard the K7.. station calling and calling and not answering anyone, and he was not the only one!

Oh, well, on to the next contest--I have started practicing cw at 30wpm now to get my receiving speed up although maybe even that isn't fast enough for those speed-demons! 

73

Scott  AA0AA