[Mldxcc] "Practicing" in CW contests

[Richard Hill]

One big concern I had in entering a CW contest was causing trouble for the
other operator due to bad keying, bad responses to questions, or wasting the
other ops time. I did want to add to the club score.

I used computer keying so that my own sending errors were minimized.
I listened until I was confident I heard the callsign and all parts of the
exchange, and knew what sequential number was next.
I avoided competing in pileups and concentrated on sending when an operator
had a slow period.
I was prepared to hear common repeat requests.
I deliberately avoided responding when I was likely to be in the mud or when
the other station was not clear.
I sent generally at 24 wpm because I hear best at that speed (I practice
often at this speed to hear letters rather than dits and dahs to avoid
translation).

LCR shows that 12 of 139 exchanges went wrong on the other end.  Very small
data set-not trying to extrapolate).

Several heard A rather than U, and I suspect that had to do with an
interpretation of signal strength and/or skill (I recognize that di dah and
di di dah are similar - one op heard Nv6T rather than Nu6T which may be a
similar problem).  Several missed the 02 license and heard some older date.
Since these are common in my phone LCRs, I'm guessing that my sending was
OK.  Only three missed my QSO number, of which I had some concern because I
had a pilot error that resulted in my sending numbers in the 500 series
instead of numbers below 200. Only one was a high number and that was a dupe
or invalid. Two were NIL.

I think this is probably not something to worry about and should not
discourage future participation.  Others who have similar concerns may find
this useful.

Rich
NU6T