[CQ-Contest] How to start a run

[Jim Stahl]

Tim,

That explains a lot. 20 meters is rarely a good running band from Ohio, and from what I heard from here in New Jersey, that was true this weekend.

Listen to where you hear relatively loud signals coming from, and ask yourself how much contest activity is coming from those areas. If you only hear Colorado and Florida (from Ohio) you won’t have much of a target audience. If you’re hearing the east coast, W9, VE3, northern W4 land, you stand a much better chance of people hearing your CQs. 

That said, if there are good signals from a limited area, do try a few CQs if it is at a time when most people in your area on another band. From Ohio, an example of this if California is coming in on 20 after most of the eastern activity has gone down to 40 or 80.

Another tip for phone: have two (or more) sets of phonetics ready to roll off your lips. Don’t repeat everything twice to use them in the same transmission, but alternate between Tango/Tokyo, Alpha/America, Hotel/Honolulu, etc. Especially where the common phonetics have similar sounding ones for a different letter, i.e. Alpha and Delta. What sounds perfectly clear in your mind may not be clear to somebody else with different ears, local accents, etc.

With all these tips coming in, I trust you will use them to get some good practice in the Ohio QSO Party this Saturday!


73  -  Jim  K8MR



On Aug 21, 2016, at 12:11 PM, Timothy Holmes <taholmes160 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi steve
> 
> To answer your questions
> 
> I was trying to run on 20 m. Around 14.247 at abt 2100z or so
> 
> My antenna was a 125 ft dipole up 40 ft
> 
> In testing, I had gotten excellent audio reports
> 
> I have not done comparison testing
> 
> Tim
> 
> On Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 9:35 AM Steve London <n2icarrl at gmail.com> wrote: