[CQ-Contest] SS and CW contesting

[Joe]

This IS  something very interesting actually,
If you look at my rate graph, That Bump you see at 20:00Z?
That was a simple change of going from the typical ~30/35 WPM,

to only ~16/18 WPM.

It felt terrible at first, Kind of like when you get off the expressway 
after driving 75 for 8 hours to go to a regular road at 60 feels like 
you are crawling.  But the QSO rate JUMPED a LOT!

Probably all those that can not copy the 30+ wpm.  hmmmmm?

Joe W9ET/WB9SBD
Sig
The Original Rolling Ball Clock
Idle Tyme
Idle-Tyme.com
http://www.idle-tyme.com
On 11/9/2017 10:19 AM, Steve London wrote:
> I have listened to recordings of SS from the 60's and 70's. What 
> strikes me is how much slower CW speeds were then. You needed to troll 
> in all of those newly-hatched General's, who could copy only slightly 
> more than 13 WPM. Obviously, this slowed the rate on Saturday, leaving 
> many more QSO's to be made on Sunday. If you tried running at 35 WPM, 
> you would quickly run out of QSO's.
>
> Fast forward to today. With very few slow speed contesters out there, 
> we are working each other at 30-40 WPM, with high rates. No one left 
> to work on Sunday.
>
> As a datapoint, the 1968 winner of SS CW was KV4FZ, with 1000 QSO's. 
> The QST writeup has some interesting photos - WA5LES (now K5RC), K5YAA 
> (still K5YAA !), WA5RTG (now K5GO), WA2CLQ (now K1ZM).
>
> 73,
> Steve, N2IC
>
> On 11/09/2017 08:18 AM, Bill via CQ-Contest wrote:
>> It has now been 10 years since the US went code-free and ham radio 
>> license
>> numbers are at ALL TIME highs - 750K total, half are general and 
>> extra that
>> have HF privileges. 30K new techs a year, 10K upgrades a year from 
>> tech to
>> general/extra. The problem for CW contesting is the number of hams 
>> that can
>> copy code at 20+ WPM is decreasing and will continue to do so. New 
>> hams are
>> on SSB/FM/digital. Look at the FT8 band segments on a bandscope. Look 
>> at the
>> QSO totals in the RTTY contests. Read QST. And MOST importantly look 
>> at the
>> checks in the last SS.
>>
>> Looking at the number of submitted logs for a contest doesn't 
>> indicate how
>> the contest is doing, because it is now so easy to submit a log via 
>> web page
>> copy and paste. A good indication is for all the ops that put in 22+ 
>> hours
>> last weekend to ask themselves if they HAD fun and if they look 
>> forward to
>> putting in 22+ hours next year? Did they feel like they couldn't wait 
>> for it
>> to end? Were they squirming in their chair the last few hours?
>>
>> The only significant major contest scoring change I can think of in 
>> the last
>> 45 years is WPX getting rid of zero point Q's. That's when I started 
>> entering
>> the WPX. There needs to be some changes in the SS for those of us 
>> that still
>> operate CW contests. Only 54 stations reported on 3830 operating 24 
>> hours. In
>> 2010 there were 125 stations. I don't see anything positive in that 
>> trend.
>>
>> 73, Bill KO7SS  (47 years operating CWSS)
>> _______________________________________________
>> CQ-Contest mailing list
>> CQ-Contest at contesting.com
>> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
>>
> _______________________________________________
> CQ-Contest mailing list
> CQ-Contest at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
>
>



---
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
http://www.avg.com