[SCCC] NAQP CW: K1USC

[Tony Ruiz]

Station: K1USC
OP: Tony Ruiz
QTH: Alta Loma, CA., San Bernardino County, DM14
Operation time: 10 Hours
Yaesu 857D, 100 wts., AT100Pro autotuner, G5RV inverted-V dipole antenna
25ft up.

NA QSO Party - CW:
Band	QSO's
10M	  2
15M	 29
20M	 83
40M	 42
80M	 59
Total QSO's:	215
Multipliers:	102
Total Score:	21,930

I must admit I was really looking forward to this event.  What made it
interesting was having the teams & combining our collective scores. Seeing
five different SCCC teams brought out a little of the competitive side. I
wanted to do as well as possible so I can post a good score to help my team,
SCCC # 4. Knowing some of the members on the other teams also motivated me
to keep plugging away because you just gotta have a higher score than them.
hi hi. 

Truthfully, I knew my tally would get blown out of the water by most of the
club members but, I just wanted to have a respectable score and certainly
try to top my prior scores. Last January a made about 50 SSB QSO's. In the
Fall NAQP I made about 100 CW QSO's.  This time around, my personal goal was
to reach 200 QSO's. That would be an all time high for any type of contest
I've entered. I'm glad I made that mark and did it in a 10 hour contest. 

I heard a good majority of you guys out there. I made:
4 QSO's with KQ6ES 
3 QSO'S with: W6SJ 
2 QSO's with: AA6PW, WN6K, N6HC & W6KK
1 QSO with: W6YI, K6LL, K6LA, K6NR, K6XT, K6EY
It was nice to help earn us some points.  Funny thing is, the most Q's were
with member's of my own team. 
Good timing, I guess. : )

When making contacts, my biggest slow down is being able to copy the CW
quickly on the first shot. While S&P'ing I will usually have to listen once
or twice before I catch the call & name.  It truly is a skill and an art
that I will have to continue to work at before It becomes more natural. My
QSO rate was about 18-25 an hour as it does take a little bit of time to
understand their exchange. Overall I see myself improving with the highest
rate ever for a contest.  

One thing I am glad I did was calling "CQ".  I was actually nervous for the
first few responses as my biggest worry was being able to understand the
call, name & state when others answered back. Thankfully, it went well.  No
pile-ups, not too crowded. I set my speed to about 17 WPM and called out.
Folks QRS'ed and repeated for me as needed. I did a little CQ'ing on most of
the bands. That's how I got the 10 Meter contacts.  Probably 10% of my
contacts were from calling CQ. It was a good experience as I'll want to try
a multi-op one of these days. I figure the contest stations are the ones
using doing most of the CQ'ing so I better try my hand at it more and more.
This was a good contest to try it as the playing field was pretty level.

A fun time was had. 

Tony, K1USC
Alta Loma, CA

dit dit