[CQ-Contest] BOGUS QSO RATES!

[George Fremin III]

On Wed, Nov 09, 2011 at 06:35:03AM -0600, Bob Naumann wrote:
> 
> As the method you apply here is one based on your greater than average skill
> set and experience, what would you recommend for someone who is not blessed
> with the same or just starting out?

I am not Jeff - but I will give some thoughts on this topic.

First I will say that much of what we have been talking about is not
something that most folks "just starting out" would have to worry about
since they will likely not be running in very high rate situations. 

This topic was started by AH8DX complaining about a list of hourly
QSO rates that are above 300 contacts an hour.  

Most of these techniques are not much of an advantage at slower rates. 

> One of the advanced techniques that K5TR mentioned is the copying of several
> callsigns (or partial calls) at one time from a pileup and working each of
> them without signing or saying TU or QRZ.

That was not what I was talking about - but that does also happen - although
usually not more than a callsign or two - I was talking about not saying 
my callsign and just saying 'Thanks' as a way of saying I am ready for 
the next caller.  One reason to do this - is some people will not call
me if I just say a quick 'thanks' and this will have the effect of thinning
the pileup a bit and allow me to up the rate a bit - having too many 
people calling at once slows things down.

There are many many little things that you can do to up the rate a bit
here and there - going really fast can be hard and there are a lot of little
things that in total can change your 300 hour rate into a 360 hour rate
or change your 300 hour into a 240 hour.  It is one of the things I 
find fascinating.

> 
> For those looking for ways to improve, would you recommend that they call
> one CQ, get a pileup going and just say "Cue Are Zed" at the end of every
> QSO, or would it be better for them (until they develop better skills) to
> just say their callsign at the end of each QSO?

Yes, I would agree with that in general - but if they do want to get
better - then I see no harm in talking about how you produce high
rate.  And we are not talking about calling one CQ here and then running
for minutes or hours on end without signing your callsign. 

> Better efficiency does not result merely from omitting your callsign.

Very true. 

And as stated above - for me at least - one of the reasons for not 
signing my call every time has nothing to do with saving my time
of saying 'thanks' vs 'k5tr' or 'hc8n' or whatever - I do it for 
other reasons.

One suggestion I have for anyone wanting to look at this more is to 
find recordings of high rate and listen to what the operator is 
doing and not doing and see if you can figure out why he made the 
choices he has made.

How often is he signing his callsign?

What causes him to not sign it?

Does he always use phonetics?

Does he sometimes listen longer than other times
to the pileup calling?  Why?

There are many many choices that I make during a run in 
an effort to put more contacts in the log.


-- 
George Fremin III - K5TR
geoiii at kkn.net
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr