[CQ-Contest] Be careful what you wish for

[sbloom at acsalaska.net]

I was gonna say, I heard a little bit of everything in this one.  Automatic CQ loops with bug exchanges.  Slow but perfect straight key exchanges with (by our standards, meaning a CK in this century), and even a couple of "circa WB2EUF" chirpy signals that drifted through then out of my passband during the exchange.  Sometimes it doesn't seem like it, but the CWops and SKCC orgs are turning out a fair number of competent cw operators.

It was interesting how many of the folks would resend the entire exchange, no matter what I asked for in a repeat.  I guess not everybody recognizes the NTS Radiogram format anymore :(

73
Steve KL7SB

 


On Mon, 6 Nov 2017 12:07:14 -0800, "Eric Gruff"  wrote:

I agree with the part about it being easier to find open spots on the bandmap to run. It’s also a function of having panadapters that let you just point and click to the empty spots.


However, there was no shortage of bug and straight key (or maybe they just soldered a phone plug onto a piece of zip cord and touched the wires together to send?) users who adopted the “a dash should be about 1.2 times longer than a dot” when sending exchanges. I had one fellow who was S9+, but decided to send serial number 9 as “009” with his straight key, and it took about five repeats to figure it out. I sent “nr 9?”, and he sent “009” over and over, which also could have been “090”, “099”, “090”, etc. This was hours into the contest, so I couldn’t rule out anything. I sure won’t be surprised if the contact comes up busted.



Then there were folks who when asked to repeat “PREC”, sent everything but that. I got the entire exchange again twice, callsigns, “?” (probably a lot of folks who don’t know what precedence is), and silence. I guess that’s why SS is so challenging.



I still had a lot of fun. I could have won the whole thing if the sun hadn’t gotten into my eyes. 😉



Eric NC6K



Message: 3

Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2017 18:23:32 -0500

From: "Randy Thompson K5ZD"  >

To: 'Radio K?HB'  >, "'CQ-Contest'"

 >

Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Be careful what you wish for

Message-ID: <008501d3568d$18529880$48f7c980$@charter.net  >

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



I was thinking the same thing. The bands just don't sound as crowded as I remember them 20+ years ago. We sure miss all those 1x3 calls that used bugs and had been doing SS forever.





Randy, K5ZD





> -----Original Message-----

> From: CQ-Contest [mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf

> Of Radio K?HB

> Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2017 4:39 PM

> To: CQ-Contest

> Subject: [CQ-Contest] Be careful what you wish for

>

> Do you remember when you wished that it was easy to find a good clear

> QRG to run in SSCW?

>

> 73, de Hans, K?HB

> "Just a boy and his radio"?

>

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