[CQ-Contest] SS and CW contesting

[Ria Jairam]

I watched some old videos of contesting and a lot of it was slower
back then too. Lots of slow phone, slow CW.

Today we have computers which speed things up. That would explain it.
Back then, you used what, a bug? And you had dupe sheets rather than
N1MM+ or Win-Test.

73
Ria, N2RJ

On Thu, Nov 9, 2017 at 12:55 PM, Joe <nss at mwt.net> wrote:
> 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
>>>
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>
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