[UK-CONTEST] 80m CC

[G3SJJ]

Sorry I missed you Andy, that would have made my 100. Hope this helps:

I S&Pd for first 40 mins, starting 3520 and going for the big faster 
signals to get as many in the bag quickly. Psychologically it feels good 
to see your tally moving up. Heard some slower ones around 3550 but have 
to admit it was uncomfortable, a bit like leaving a motorway after a 
sustained high speed drive and going straight into a 30mph zone. So I 
went back down to 3520 and worked my way back up picking off some of the 
louder ones that I missed the first time. When I reached 3552 it was 
clear so I called CQ and ran a few.

I had decided to maintain 26wpm throughout as a reasonable compromise 
between the faster guys who wanted to get on with it and the people like 
yourself. Several slower ones called but I maintained the speed whilst 
leaving longer gaps. After 10 Qs it dried up so I tuned higher and found 
2 very slow ones, again I am sorry, but very uncomfortable. A G3V had 
really bad clix and didn't really seem to know what he was doing, but I 
stuck with it for the two QSOs then went back down to 3530 and started 
looking for some weaker ones, ie s9 rather than 20 over as most stations 
appeared to be! When I reached 3547 I tuned back again and found a slot 
on 3530 and I ran until the end bagging the UA9 and 5B/.

As regards people rattling on at high speed, well unfortunately it is a 
fact of life that there are more medium to higher speed QSOs available 
than slow speed so it isn't really counter productive as you can see 
from the scores. Usually in AFS and these events I use SO2V, running 
continuously on one freq whilst s&Ping on the sub rx. It was harder when 
I first started using that technique about 20 years ago with the TS930, 
since it was literally two VFOs and you had to keep switching from one 
to the other, but now with the FT1kMP it is possible to keep listening 
on your Run freq, whilst searching for new/slower ones. N1MM is really 
great for this as you can store them on the bandmap and then do a sweep.

Hope that helps your quest. 73 Chris G3SJJ


>I tried running most the time and it wasn't too succesful - only 40odd
>logged, do other S&pers not bother calliing someone whos a little bit
>weak or am I very very weak?  Whenever I try S&P inevitably whoever I
>call gets called by someone else much stronger and I end up waiting in a
>queue twiddling my thumbs and whiling away the whole contest listening
>to someone elses QSOs!!  Hence why I prefer to try running in these
>events.
>
>However,  I also always seem to pick running frequencies that a
>fishphone is going to suddenly wake up on!  
>
>On the subject of QRS corral I often use the area above 3550 because a)
>there's usually no-one else there (fishphones are away having a cup of
>tea :-) and b) last night I reached a record maximum run speed of 18wpm
>- I always run at a speed I'm comfortable with (usually 16!) and so
>nearly qualify for the qrs corral,  _and_ I always slow the speed down
>when called by someone slower.  I was particularly pleased last night to
>be called by a few at slower speeds than me, nice to know that people
>feel they can!  When tuning round there were a few I heard rattling away
>at over 30wpm , it's surely counterproductive?
>
>And lastly, I'm sure that Steve himself will be able to answer this,
>but what serial was gw4alg handing out?  I copied 158, and thought
>surely not and asked for the repeat -  my CW is pretty ropey but it
>sounded like 158 second time to.
>
>
>73
>Andy
>gm8oeg
>
>_______________________________________________
>UK-Contest mailing list
>UK-Contest at contesting.com
>http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/uk-contest
>
>  
>