[CQ-Contest] ARRL SS CW HMO records 1996-2022

[jimk8mr at aol.com]

 If I did indeed invent it, I don't charge royalties for others to do it   :-)

The HMO name is not mine. I call it SOMS - Single Operator, Multi-Station.  To me the highly motivated operators are the folks who hang in there for 24 hours scaping up the last QSOs from the bottom of the barrel.

SOMS/HMO is a concept that ought to be expanded to allow it from a single location, by the ARRL easing up or dropping the one transmitter - one callsign rule. CQ does not have such a rule for their contests, and I have done many of their contests using two different calls from my own QTH. Most recently in WPX CW I swapped back and forth between NC8C and NO8DX. I don't think anyone was upset to get the extra QSOs or multiplier.

I believe the intent of the rule was to prevent operations like one we dreamed up but never implemented back in the college days at W8EDU.  We thought of taking the "novice station" to one of the dorms to walk the hams in the club through to give W8EDU extra QSOs. 

Some limits of second callsign use would be in order. In particular, some minimum time off (a couple of hours?) before returning to a previously used callsign. But as we get better at making QSOs while all too many of us are dropping from the scene, having more calls available to work would be a very good thing.


73  -  Jim   K8MR








    On Sunday, October 1, 2023 at 10:53:14 PM EDT, Art Boyars <artboyars at gmail.com> wrote:  
 
 My recollection is that K8MR invented it (maybe didn't name it) to
relieve slow periods in SSCW, and that NCCC (probably driven by W6OAT) used
it as a club strategy to boost the club's score.  NCCC might have named it
HMO.

73, Art K3KU

On Fri, Sep 29, 2023 at 9:20 PM Jim Brown <k9yc at audiosystemsgroup.com>
wrote:

> On 9/29/2023 7:02 AM, Tim Shoppa wrote:
> > An HMO in Sweepstakes, starts the contest over
> > from scratch at a new station using a new callsign to get more action
> over
> > the entire contest period. The most aggressive HMO entries use 3 or 4
> > different stations and callsigns during the contest period.
>
> It's my understanding that Rusty, W6OAT, was the inventor of the
> strategy, long before I joined NCCC in 2006. Note that the rules also
> require a different transmitter for each callsign.
>
> I've done a lot more HMOs than those listed here, exchanging calls and
> stations with N3ZZ, W6DRX, and N6RZ (SK), and also used N6IJ 2-3 times
> as my second station, but I've never done more that two in any given
> weekend. I've most often started at my own station, moved to the second
> station early on Sunday morning. About a third of the time I was able to
> sweep from both.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
>