[UK-CONTEST] Frequency fights? Take it to the system!!!

[Gerry Lynch]

I had three serious frequency fights this year. I won two. I lost one. 
They say that two out of three ain't bad.

One was a genuine collision on twenty after we both turned antennas - 
until then we'd been zero beat but weak with one another and working 
people that the other could rarely detect. We'd co-operated well, but 
now both of us needed to make a strategy change at the same time. His 
rate working the very first far East Coasters and pre-dawn W5s wasn't 
great; I was a hop closer and had had my fill of one-point Europeans, 
and I had yet to make any effort to work those, pre-dawn, high sunspot 
years, mid-Westerners and Texans that appear in the hour before the 
first big rush of strong East Coasters from Boston and New York, 
occasionally Florida. One of us was going to lose. I was blooming sure 
it wasn't going to be me. I was bigger and uglier and was beaming the 
way with the better rate in the first place, so I won. Sad, but better 
than if I'd lost.

It turned out to be a lovely opening into 5- and 9-lands on our Sunday 
morning, with conditions being so good this year. There was even the odd 
0-lander in there, right in the dead of their night.

The other big frequency fight that I won was when I allowed someone to 
sidle up around 400 Hz LF from me - just out of the range where I could 
resolve speech. It was on ten, right in the low four hundreds where I 
always find rate best for us when ten is open. It was annoying: he was 
strong and slowed the rate a bit, but at first my callers were mostly so 
strong the frequency potentially too good to risk, so I allowed him. 
Then I worked the top tier down a bit, had mostly second tier callers 
who took a few repeats, my rate kept slowing and I had a bunch of 
frustrated third tier callers that I could detect but not resolve, and 
propagation was shifting and he was getting even stronger. He had to go. 
So I tuned zero-beat with him, told him I'd been there for over an hour 
(may have been exagerrating a bit but I was first by a long way) and 
he'd only come on 15 minutes ago, I couldn't put up with him any more 
and he had to go. He was really annoyed. Like, really annoyed - well, so 
would I be - and accused me of bullying him and being English (I'm not).

We traded CQs for a while but I had a small pileup who had been 
listening in to the fight, he had no callers, and I only had to get to 
the second repeat of the first caller (a 2x1 5-lander) before he 
accepted defeat and cleared off. He was a midwesterner and he would have 
been very strong in his first hop range of New England, and then 
rippling down towards 4-land off the side off his beam, and he would 
have been as a good a signal as he was with me in all of my skip zone, 
his key target area. And he was a great signal. Between us we'd blown 
open a big hole in the band over half the planet and it set us up for 
the two best hours in the contest, 500+ contacts in 2 hours and the best 
hourly rate on the run station probably peaking around 275-280.

And that is why contesting is such an awesome sport, so much more 
entertaining than those in other aspects of the hobby would ever allow. 
It's a sport that's full of stories. And we're absolutely terrible in 
telling those stories. No wonder we're so misunderstood. I know that 
particular anecdote will really annoy some people, and so be it. The 
strong stomp on the weak in contesting, and the weakest get squeezed to 
the bottom of the pile, at least in SSB, because that's the only 
possible ecology in a contest where band space is limited. Part of the 
thrill of being one of the weak - and I was one of the very weak for a 
very long time, and still had great contesting experiences - is grabbing 
your run opportunities when you can. On SSB the opportunities are 
cherished - CW is less of a power game; it allows more space for weaker 
stations to run; and multiplier battles, while still affected profoundly 
by power, allow the skilled but weaker station many opportunities to 
dance through.

Ten opens up more opportunities for weaker stations to run, and also 
thins out the mess on the lower bands, especially on SSB. Forty was 
thinned out quite a bit this year, and that's why it was so good, yet 
strangely underestimated in the post-contest reports. It was still a zoo 
- we would be the poorer for it if it weren't - but we worked a whole 
tier of people with great signals that we normally just don't hear here 
in QRM Alley. We needed that great K number for forty to play like that, 
but even in low sunspot years with a low K-index you just don't get the 
space on that band to hear the any but the strongest stations from 
farther away.

Some people will hate that comment about space and stomping. But the 
alternative to overcongested bands is a dying and marginal hobby, not 
the growing, record-setting, one we have, and so often fail to appreciate.

Perhaps theoretically space isn't limited on ten, but prime real estate 
is even there. Yes, you can get a nice clear frequency up there in WW 
SSB around 28.900 no problem, but you can't get rate. If you want to 
compete seriously in high power or multi-op contesting you must ideally 
be in the 28.400 to 28.550 range, at least for the majority of your 
running time. We aren't really that much of a big gun on ten with 
four-over-four, so I tend to steer a bit lower, towards 28.400 where the 
really big boys seem fewer. However running high is a great strategy for 
a second or third tier station, and if you're a snappy operator you can 
get great rate: with 100 Watts and a tribander in a really good year, 
you can hit 150-180 for an hour or two in late Saturday afternoon from 
G, usually the second and third last hours of the band opening, if 
propagation is with you. This will be primarily into North America; low 
latitude Middle East stations like HZs and A6s may still have some 
limited late night propagation. Propagation at their end isn't good 
enough for them to run unless they are monster class, but it is good 
enough for them to call you off the back off your beam at good strength. 
In a really good year, this opening might extend to VK6 or even YB. A 
nice diet of spicy multipliers to liven up the filling and nutritious 
but bland diet of three-pointers from Zones 4 and 5, the odd Zone 3 and 
in a really good year maybe even a KH6 or KL7.

A 100 Watts and vertical operator will probably get the same peak rates 
- although lower point scores, and in the early afternoon, from a mixed 
bag of stations in different regions. Your rate will peak as the 
hundreds of 100-Watt-and-vertical stations, similar to yours, in the big 
population centres of the Atlantic seaboard get on the band early, but 
too early to run except for the megastations, almost always building 
from nothing to good strength in less than 15 minutes in the middle of 
your European run, while the Europeans still stream in. As well as Zone 
5s and Europeans, Middle Eastern and even South East Asian stations, 
occasionally rare Africans and, in a good year, VK6s, Siberians and 
Central Asians, will add three-point and multiplier interest to a steady 
stream of one-point Ukrainians, Spaniards and Russians, especially for 
unassisted stations.

Rates and frequency choices will be lower for the CW event, but the 
principles are the same. On both modes, you must accept that a 
third-tier GM or GW, a third-tier GI in SSB, and most of all a 
third-tier G, is not that tempting a target and people will not stick 
around for you to have lots of repeats or indulge in extraneous 
operating habits. The repeats may sometimes be unavoidable but a verbose 
operating style is always avoidable. If two stations call you at once, 
the second will probably stick around if both you and your first QSO 
partner are snappy. You can maximise your chances of doing that not only 
by running snappily, but being snappy when in search and pounce mode as 
well, giving you more time to find QSOs and spreading good contest 
operating practice around the bands.

In the midst of this reverie of theorising, I forgot to tell you about 
the final frequency fight I got into, the one that I lost. I ran smack 
into those Thunderbirds wannabes on 14.300, just after that beautiful 
Zone 4 opening I was telling you about earlier. I wondered why there was 
such a lovely clear frequency on such a crowded band, but I put it down 
to it being so high in the band, and maybe some Siberian big gun had 
just vacated it and gone to forty, following the propagation, hoping for 
Californians, far from the madding European crowd.

The strong late morning opening on twenty was just moving that bit 
deeper west, with the 8-landers coming in nicely and even the odd 
eastern 5-lander absolutely rocking in. You knew it would soon be time 
to move to fifteen, and if I was only working Ws, I would already have 
moved. But with the high antenna on at around 290 for the Eastern 
States, I had the low antenna at 35 degrees, more in hope than 
expectation, towards JA; this backed up a steady but unspectacular USA 
rate with a trickle of three-pointers from Japan, Siberia and Central 
Asia, as well as the more obvious Scandinavians, Russians and 
Ukrainians, even the odd SP and eastern DL, weak in midday absorption. 
It was a lot of fun.

And then the Thunderbirds turned up. They were loud, they were hard and 
they didn't give a goshdarn about any stinking rate. They were brutal. 
They were beaming right down my throat. I didn't stand a chance. They 
were really very impressive. We should recruit them as contesters.

You can hear the Thunderbirds in action from CQWW SSB two years ago at 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIm14Jk12nI

73

Gerry Gi0RTN