[UK-CONTEST] Contest Style

[Cooper, Stewart]

This has developed into an interesting thread. Some thoughts:
On sending the other stations call with the RST (after they call CQ and you respond), I only do it when I feel it's necessary. That may sometimes happen in an 80m CC event perhaps as I am a weak GM and there may be noise at the G end. But I make the judgement at each QSO and I think that's the way to deal with it.
These 80m CC contests can help to hone your skills to a limited degree. You listen to how others do things and perhaps mimic them, or even learn from their mistakes. But there are those who will learn from those who haven't yet learnt.
What I have noticed is that in general (but not totally), the newer operators are not learning. This callsign-before-report thing is one example. Sending slowly (which is absolutely fine) but also sending EVERYTHING SLOWLY TWICE is another. And why the huge time delay between my response to a CQ and getting an acknowledgement - checking a manual dupe-sheet perhaps? Worried about dupes at all? The proliferation of last two letters (when not required or asked for). ...And other terrible operating techniques are not going away.
However, we should not get worked up about it on this reflector. We're probably preaching to the converted. What I think we ought to be doing is figuring out how we can influence or educate the new arrivals to 80m CC events and contesting in general. I would urge anyone who has an interest in contesting to give a talk at your local club. It seems to me that that is the only way we're going to spread the word. Leading by example on the air is not working. Perhaps an article in RadCom? I don't know. I realise that there is a lot of opposition to contesting, so it has to be 'us' who make the move to educate and influence. Remember the D68C article? It taught our grandmother to suck eggs, but it worked. It was brilliant. How to make a sloping dipole! Excellent. And people did it. So, the same egg-sucking tutorial might work for contesting. 'Here's how to work GB5HQ in the IARU...'. 'Here's what to say..... Mike Mike Zero...'
I would also say that one shouldn't draw too many conclusions from the rise in interest in the 80m CC sessions. If asked, I think most would say that they have very little else to do at 9.30pm on a Thursday evening (compared to 48 hours over an entire weekend). Flame me if I'm wrong.

Stewart
GM4AFF
(and GZ7V in IOTA - believe it)

________________________________

From: uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com on behalf of G3SJJ
Sent: Wed 22/06/2005 18:20
To: uk-contest at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [UK-CONTEST] Contest Style



Remainder truncated.





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