Paul’s question regarding names is a good one. Those of us who have been at this a while are really happy to see so many SECC teams entered. A few of us are a little new to this, so here are some thoughts:

Names: Most people use their own name if it’s not a really long or difficult name and many shorten their name, but you can use any name. I would shorten Bartholomew to Bart. Most of the Andrews, Alexanders, Williams, Roberts, etc are using Andy, Al, Bill and Bob. Shorter is better, but also common is better. If you use a name like “Xe” expect to have to repeat it many times and that will surely slow you down. Many stations use history files and many of us have a lot of the names memorized. If you use the same name in every outing your contacts will go more smoothly, as you will be sending what’s already expected on the other end. Names are sometimes adopted for one outing to honor someone. We had an SK named Don last year – many people used Don as a memorial. Some people change their name every outing to force the folks using history files to actually copy the exchange. For this they pay a steep penalty of having to send fills more often – that practice is up to the individual.

Scoring well: This is a fun contest in that it has a nice scoring balance between QSO total and mults. There are enough mults to chase, particularly when you can work all of them over and over on each of six bands, to keep you busy chasing mults all day and night. The winners will be around 1300 Qs and 225 mults. Here are last year’s top ten:

 NK7U(KL9A)        1335   227    10    303,045

N5KO(@W6NL)       1318   218    10    287,106

W7RN(N6TV)        1141   223    10    254,443

NN3W(@N3HBX)      1093   217    10    237,181

N1BAA             1122   209    10    234,498

K7BG              1068   213  9:47    227,484

NP4Z              1018   223    10    227,014

N3BB              1162   191    10    221,942

N6RO              1037   213    10    220,881

K1ZZ               942   227    10    213,834

If you are new to the contest, the above scores should not enter into your thinking very much! The key to these big scores however is a good balance between Qs and mults. Get on every band you have antennas for at some point in the contest, even if you are just playing around. When you show up on a new band, every contact is a new multiplier for a while. Move around (band to band) as much as you can if you can’t CQ your way to a high rate someplace, and pick up those mults.

Off time: This is a tough one. The first four hours you must stay in the chair if you are working on a good score. Time off for dinner isn’t a bad strategy, as 10 and 15 will probably be closing and 40/80/160 will not be open well yet to the west coast. The key to any domestic contest is to pour a big signal into the population centers on every band you can. They are: the Northeast, Florida (GA, AL and TN also very active), Texas, Midwest (IN,IL,MI,OH) and California. Working CA on 80 and 160 with 100W can be done if you have an okay antenna or better and you have left some time in the last two hours. 160 is still improving to CA as the contest ends. Taking the last 30 minutes off is okay, but I would not take the last two hours off. Besides, it’s nice to have a break somewhere in the middle. Remember, off times are a minimum of 30 minutes in length except for the last one, which can be any length to bring you to an even 10 hours maximum (or less if you are part time).

Logs: This contest has a tight log submission deadline, its 14 days from the date of the contest. Logs get submitted at the NAQP web site.

Fun: It’s easy to enjoy this contest. If you are brand new to CW contesting, stay high in the bands, do mostly S&P, move around a lot and enjoy yourself. Don’t sweat the score – you won’t win anyway, and next year you can beat this year’s score, which is always a great feeling.

See ‘all tomorrow – and as John has mentioned, there is a half hour practice tonight at 9:30PM local time which is a good warmer-upper.

Hal

N4GG