[CQ-Contest] Precedence?

[Jack Brindle]

I think part of the problem is the number of F-Keys available for messages. Sweepstakes has four fields that may require fills (really five, but we usually have our callsign covered with a key already). This means that we need eight keys (four for fill requests, the other four for the actually data). Most loggers don’t really support this many keys, so we end up choosing what data we can assign to keys and hope for the best. With that in mind, many ops will simply append Prec to Nr and then send them together. Even still, that means six keys.

So, what I suspect what most folks do is to just send the whole thing whenever any fill request comes in. There is also the situation where we get tired and accidentally hit the wrong key. I found myself a time or two in CW SS accidentally hitting the CQ key (quickly followed by abort) when I really wanted to hit the NR key. I used SkookumLogger in Sweeps. I assigned the four fills to keys, then brought up the keyboard CW whenever I needed to request a fill. That also caused a few issues from forgetting to get out of keyboard mode, usually sending the received fill data at the end of my exchange. Yes, I did confuse a few folks. They were tired also…

So perhaps it might be a combination of them misunderstanding the request, hitting the wrong key, or not having all the fill data set up on their keyboard.

73!
Jack, W6FB


> On Nov 8, 2019, at 12:39 PM, N4ZR <n4zr at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> I think most folks use PREC? but if the guy on the other end says "?" I try "NR?" in hope that he will concatenate number and precedence, and if necessary, "AGN PSE". But I agree, not everyone gets it.
> 
> 73, Pete N4ZR
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> On 11/8/2019 12:27 PM, john at kk9a.com wrote:
>> 
>> What it the best way to ask for a repeat of someone's precedence in SS CW? For me this is the most difficult part of the exchange to get sent again. Often I get the section is repeated instead and I have to ask again in a different way or sometimes the whole report is sent again which at least resolves the issue. In a few cases the calling station simply disappeared after my query and I had to wipe them from my log.
>> 
>> John W4AAA (KK9A,op)
>> 
>> 
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