[UK-CONTEST] REAL Contesting

[Dave Lawley]

See below a posting by N6TR to cq-contest. With conditions the way they 
are there may not be much to hear on 20m, but for the insomniacs among 
you, the NA CW Sprint contest is well worth a go - there is activity on 
40m these days from the start.

The top stations can make in excess of 400 QSOs in four hours. Not bad, 
but given that you must QSY after every other QSO, you realise how much 
skill is involved. Even just listening to the frenetic activity 
generates a buzz! As N6TR says, it's "the most fun you can have in 4 
hours with your clothes on."

Together with I2UIY I have been trying to promote the European Sprint
contests, the next events will take place in early October but activity 
is nothing like the level seen in the NA sprint. I'm coming to the 
conclusion that too many Eu operators are interested less in skill, and 
more in running excess power and pressing F1 all weekend. And of course 
another great advantage of the sprint format is that packet cluster is 
of no help at all.

Dave G4BUO

------------------------------------------------------

From: tree at kkn.net
Date: Tue Sep 5 12:44:14 EDT 2006

Hard to believe the kids are back in school and 160 meters is starting 
to show signs of life (ZS6WN worked last night).  This must mean the 
September CW Sprint is near.

So - time to reconfigure you stations back to HF contesting mode and 
listen up on those high speed CW tapes.  If you are wondering what the 
heck a CW Sprint is, please visit one of the following (or all of the 
following) web sites:

http://web.jzap.com/n6tr/sprint.html
http://www.contesting.com/articles/198
http://www.ncjweb.com/sprintrules.pdf

One of the best ways to encourage activity is to twist the arms of some 
of your friends and form a team.  Teams may be registerd before the 
contest on the NCJ web page at http://www.ncjweb.com.