[CQ-Contest] CW slow? No problem

[Holger Hannemann]

I have to echo Charly here. It was absolutely annoying and a waste of time
for many operators seeing SO2R stations blocking frequencies while the
action was obviously on the other band. TI7W (please do not take this
personal! I apologise in advance.) was a candidate we came across multiple
times (!) with that practice. He called randomly CQ on 15 and obviously did
not listen at all on the band as he fired the next call back into US and  OC
stations still answering his earlier call. No pattern, no rhythm in those
calls so very difficult to adapt. Now you can argue look at his score. And
sure it is a great score but do I like this practice? No. I think it is a
very egoistic approach as you purposely waste other operators time and block
resources you don't use.

 

On 80m we struggled with a number of high speed CW stations. While
conditions as such were good and bands at their end (Caribbean again)
obviously were very quiet this time, it may not be the same in other parts
of the world. We here had strong crashes from thunder storms over the Tasman
sea the whole weekend making copying of 40 WPM tricky. The whole call or
reply often got lost in the crashes. The Bulgarian group in 6Y was an
example for this. Even the days after the contest when they were making just
5nn QSO's they fired at a speed not related at all to the band conditions
and the pile up was simply not there. I assume they lost out on a lot of
QSO's by this practice.

 

Another annoying disruption are the big M/S stations where the multiplier
stations (often outstanding signals) calls you and does not come back even
after two or three repeats from our end. We assume they got blocked out by
their running or another multi station. It costs your time as a run station
and interrupts the pile up flow which is especially with Europeans a bad
idea.

 

As for slower CW: We see a trend of declining contest activity from Asia,
especially Japan. I think this was our first major international contest
where we worked more EU stations on 80, 40 & 20 than AS's or NA's!!! We also
worked more EU's than AS's in total. This is unheard of. We have a lot of
slow times from down here and by slowing down to below 30 WPM we felt we got
more callers (clearly straight keys & elbugs). It may be an aging problem.
We have a few own members in their late 70's and they state openly, that
nowadays they struggle with high speed CW for more than 30-60 min and feel
uncomfortable in the chair.

 

----------------- C o n t i n e n t   S u m m a r y -----------------

                 160     80     40     20     15     10  Total    Pct

---------------------------------------------------------------------

North America      0    134    700    431   1164    119   2548   44.8

South America      0      3     18     48     21      8     98    1.7

Europe             0    135    706    539    114      0   1494   26.2

Asia               0     89    370    334    539     29   1361   23.9

Africa             0      1     14      8      5      0     28    0.5

Oceania            2     16     45     41     40     12    156    2.7

???                0      0      2      3      1      1      7    0.1

--------------------------------------------------------------

Total              2    378   1855   1404   1884    169   5692

 

 

Enough complaining! It was a great contest, we enjoyed all the QSO's and
sure will be back for the next one!

 

73 Holger, ZL3IO - one of the ZM4T crew

 

 

 

Message-ID:

 
<CAJocjyjs+2bnQOfNN-QZAUmJWiZjeM_2PSKKv+j5aW_fqwk96Q at mail.gmail.com
<mailto:CAJocjyjs+2bnQOfNN-QZAUmJWiZjeM_2PSKKv+j5aW_fqwk96Q at mail.gmail.com>
>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

 

Two band occupiers, with one band being wasted with empty 40wpm CQs, are
obvious.  I operate LOUD , so I give the empty CQers ONE call, often only my
prefix due to the short "listening time" between CQs.  No answer to my one
loud-enuf call, I move on and advise all to do same.

 

Sticking around to service a guy who thinks it ok to pollute one freq while
making contacts on another band only helps perpetuate the Rotten Radio
practice as it is.

 

The next step is to CQ on SEVERAL bands at once.  I expect this soon if not
already done.

73, Charly

 

 

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 11:11 PM, Ed Sawyer <sawyered at earthlink.net
<mailto:sawyered at earthlink.net> > wrote:

 

> Actually, there is another item that is emerging as important, it's 

> the overt attempt of the Dual CQers to package the exchanges into a 

> format that suits their mode.  Faster bursts of CW with empty time in 

> between is exactly what the goal is.  So even though it seems weird to 

> hear CQ after CQ at 35

> -

> 40wpm with no callers and think - why doesn't he slow down?  You are 

> only hearing half the story.  The other band could be running well.

> 

> 

> 

> And the Q numbers speak for themselves  Its quite clear who most of 

> the dual CQer skill folks are.  And congrats to them.  An unfortunate 

> side effect of the their efficiency is the less skilled CW op on the 

> other end trying to give them a Q.  However, their numbers don't 

> reflect a problem of missing many Qs - even if they did miss some.

> 

> 

> 

> 73

> 

> 

> 

> Ed  N1UR