[UK-CONTEST] GM7V WPX SSB SOAB HP 2005

[pat058@abdn.ac.uk]

Hi all,
Not a very inspiring weekend for WPX SSB. Conditions seemed rather crummy,
even allowing for stage in cycle. Not possible (again) to do a proper
full-time effort and the hours I had to use were maybe not the best. Still
it was good to ‘stretch legs’ a bit after all the disasters with various
majors over the last few months. Had to take beverages down about a week
ago to let farmer spray field and really missed tham!

I too suffered some absolutely terrible deliberate QRM in the last 90mins
of the contest on 3691 with music, trumpets and German language abuse. On
checking, there were dozens of contest stations below me down to 3630. I
saw Stewart’s post. Were we the only lucky recipients of this abuse I
wonder?

Some other posts about DVKs and recording lots of stuff to ‘synthesise’
various permutations of contest exchanges reminded me of somethings which
occurred to me during my on-air time. With the demise of 10m and to some
extent 15m we can kiss goodbye to acres of bandwidth and clear frequencies
for a while. Just think: 3-4 years of QRM on 20, 40 and 80m !!

Thus there will be a premium on clear and efficient speech communication
especially in high QRM, low signal situations in SSB contests.

Firstly, it strikes me that some folks are not well clued up on how to
efficiently get the info across when it is obvious that signals are not
‘actually’ 59 (Please don’t start the ‘no reports’ debate again. I have no
desire to read all that again!). Sticking to standard phonetics, ‘hard’
words/sounds and a standard order for the info helps a lot. If it isn’t
too much of a contradiction to this, be flexible when necessary and repeat
stuff a few times but only relevant information. Maintain a steady pace in
info delivery.  BTW weak signal VHF work would be a good training ground
;-))

Secondly, DVKs. Unless signals are real strong and clear I think using a
DVK could lead to problems if used for exchanging QSO info. I saw one
postee who said that their DVK sounded exactly the same as the real-time
microphone audio. Maybe so in that instance but in my experience most DVKs
DO NOT sound the same as the operator. It can be really offputting when
the QSO switches from a recorded voice to ‘real-time’ If you are
struggling with a pile-up and QRM I have sometimes wondered if I am
working two different stations. Classic at the weekend was LU8XW who had a
USA voice calling CQ but a local sending the report
..huh?

Food for thought. Back under my stone.

GM7V WPX SSB 2005 SOAB HP

      BAND     QSO    QSO PTS  PTS/Q   PREFIXES

      160       12       24   	2.0      12
       80      268      633   	2.4      126
       40      281      673   	2.4     123
       20      690     1552   	2.2      306
       15      158      324   	2.1       71
       10        9       23   	2.6        6
     --------------------------------------

     Totals   1418     3229   2.3      644  =   2,079,476
About 18 hours airtime.

Best wishes,
Keith GM4YXI/GM7V