OK, here is a bit of view from the little pistol side. I made 135 contacts from a low EFHW antenna and 99W. I'm not loud. I'm a CW novice. I hear OK and send OK at 23 wpm. I practice and can hear simple exchanges up to about 30 wpm. I struggle with callsigns and complex words and phrases. I search and pounce by listening 2, 3, 4 or more times till I'm confident I have an exchange. Then I let N1MM+ and WinKey USB send my call and when appropriate send my exchange. I had a number of loud strong stations call over me, some while I sent my exchange, and some running ops abandoned me and took the loud station. OK. Wipe that one. Try again here or elsewhere, turn the big knob. Part of the game. 9⁸
Sometimes I was asked for a repeat with a question mark. I sent all again. Sometimes I heard noise or QRM/QRN and nothing specific and so I sent my entire exchange. If I hear a specific item, I sent that by hand. When I screwed up my hand sending I let N1MM+ send (not necessary often). One loud op sent "Dupe" so I checked and I had nothing similar in N1MM+. I moved on, but the next time I searched that band I got another DUPE. I sent NIL and got DUPE. We did that 2 or more times as I rotated through the bands until I memorized his call. The advice I hear in my clubs and here is work first worry later. But dupe checking works both ways, NIL means not in log and for whatever reason no dupe and he maùy lose penalty points and likely saved little time. None of this is an excuse to play in a big contest when you are not ready to play reasonably well. A contester's goal is to send and recieve as accurately and quickly as possible to accumulate the most points possible, understanding that too fast is slow, and too slow is not winning. I listened to a straight key op sending CQ SS at some 10 wpm high in the band on Saturday. I chose not to call because I'm terrible at slow code and it would not have been fun. If it had been later on Sunday I might have called. I wondered how many takers the op got? SS CW does not seem a good place for slow straight key, but it may have been an older op with a 30s-40s check. Dunno. Nothing wrong for trying, but expectations should be low. Nu6t Rich On Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 3:28 AM Nate Bargmann <n...@n0nb.us> wrote: > * On 2022 09 Nov 22:20 -0600, Jim Brown wrote: > > When answering a CQ, send ONLY your call, and never repeat anything that > the > > other station copied correctly. For example, if he sent your call > correctly > > when he responded to you, don't repeat your call when sending your > exchange. > > And when you're the caller, never send the other station's call unless > > there's confusion about who's working who. :) As Bob, K6XX, says when > he's > > teaching new contesters, "I know MY call, the only one I need is YOURS! > > I have a couple of thoughts on this advice, Jim. > > First, I agree wholeheartedly about ONLY sending your call. Field Day > is one of the most frustrating events as it is rife with bad > habits--pretty much limited to phone. I have tried to train others not > to do those bad habits and guess what, apparently it is too difficult to > accept being different (I've been different all my life so I am > comfortable here) and they do all the bad habit things they're hearing. > The last couple of times I just gave up and stuck to the CW band! > > We had one op that always would send the exchange whenever the other > station had only asked for a repeat of our call. I tried and tried to > get him to stop doing that as it just made the QSO much longer than > necessary as the flow of the exchanges got all goofed up. In his mind > this was apparently proper procedure... > > However, I would caution against the answering station NEVER sending his > call again as it is a requirement for a complete SS exchange. Yes, over > the years I copied a lot of ops that only sent #, Prec, Check, Section > and omitted their call which in retrospect I should have probably > rejected. But the rules state the call is to be sent between the Prec > and Check (years back I recall a software author from outside the US > stating that the call in the exchange was redundant and when it was > pointed out that the SS rules state it is required as part of the > exchange his retort was that the rules were wrong!) > > 73, Nate, N0NB > > -- > "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all > possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true." > Web: https://www.n0nb.us > Projects: https://github.com/N0NB > GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819 > > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to nu6t.r...@gmail.com > ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
