>My network administrator called and said too much Internet gateway
>mail (from DX/CONTEST reflectors) and need to cut it out (against
I have similar problems. All those contest scores overflow the gateway
before I can delete them. Technical Q&A on contesting are interesting,
but how little a 100 w US stn with a 40 ft tower worked has little
interest to other than that stn. So as said b4, send scores to some
other reflector or better to the nice fellow, that make a listning out
of it. Sending "set nomail" after each contest is like saying
everything here is junk mail, and that is not my opinion.
73, Palle OZ1RH. (OZ5W - OZ9EDR contest team)
>From john.devoldere@eunet.be (John Devoldere) Tue Oct 31 21:45:32 1995
From: john.devoldere@eunet.be (John Devoldere) (John Devoldere)
Subject: CQ WW SSB - OT5T STORY AND RESULTS
Message-ID: <199510312144.WAA00132@box.eunet.be>
Mark, ON4WW is in Burundi, and Peter, ON6TT left last weekend for Australia
in preparation of the Heard Dx-pedition. As we would not have our top
operators available for this contrest, we had decided, a long time ago, to
do it low pitch, exclusively with local, young and inexperienced operators
from our local radio club. This woul give the less experienced guys the
opportunity to prove themselves. It turned out that I found TWO club members
who were interested in operating: Freddy,ON4AFZ and Luk, ON6UK. There were
still a lot of candidates for spotting and for other chores (UHF links,
software etc.), but only two wanted to have a go at the mike. Two operators
just is not enough for a M/S, so I went searching for more, and found two
more nearby: ON7LX, Carine, and ON4AAM Carlo. So this was going to a be
4-man M/S effort, with ON1CIK (Filip, who is "very" young amateur radio, he
does not even have his HF license yet) and myself as "helpers" (we call it
MC's -Master of Ceremony-). We decided this was a year of teaching, testing,
probing, and trying. Being in the deep valley of the sunspot cycle,
conditions would be poor (at least), and we would not even be sure of 15
meter openings to the US. So, it would be rather boring...
The antennas were the same as last year, and all Beverages (12) are up.
Yaesu again sponsored one FT1000D to complement my own FT1000D.
Oct 27: eighty meters is red hot, the last few hours before the contest.
Fifteen was open as well on Friday afternoon, so maybe we would be able to
have a few stateside pile-ups after all...
All together, conditions were excellent, considering we are in 1995. One
frustration however: 10 meters opened up really well for stations even only
a few hundred miles South of us. We saw all these nice spots ion the
DX-cluster, but rarely could hear or work anything. This year the more
Southerly located stations will have an even greater advantage than last
year! Ten was definitely very much down from last year with us. Ten meters
only yielded 53 countries, while we made 147 last year (and 20 zones vs. 31
in 1994). Fifteen was open to the US on both days, which yielded us 1221
QSO's (vs. only 576 in 1994). However we made less countries(129 vs. 162)
and less zones (35 vs. 37) than last year. Like in 1994, 20 was the best
band, but we also made less multipliers (135 countries vs. 150, and 29 zones
vs. 40), but we made more QSO's (1744 vs. 1549)as the propagation to the US
was better than last year (no Aurora thisyear). Forty was much better, but
we did not seem to be able to turn that into a high number of QSO's.
Although we planned around 1200 to 1500 QSO's we only made 727 (vs. 522 in
1994), with 30 zones (vs. 33 in 1994) and 110 countries (same total as in
1994). Eighty must have been better, but we missed a lot of good
multipliers. the team made 588 QSO's (vs. 727 in 1994) in 20 zones (23 in
1994) and 94 countries (84 in 1994). One-sixty yielded better results than
in 1994: 176 QSO's (vs. 96 in 1994) with 11 zones (vs. 10 in 1994) and 61
countries (53 in 1994).
All of this is good enough for a raw score of 8.2 Mi points. With a better
spotter set-up, we certainly should have made 10 to 11 Mi. points (in 1994
we made 7.4 Mi.). Where last year, with 6 operators, we continuously had the
main spotting station (at ON6TT's QTH) manned with one of the contest
operators (one that was off-duty), we did not have anything like that this
year. The spotting station (the club station) was manned by young, willing,
courageous, but inexperienced -even VHF- operators.
And of course, our operators were learning the trade. While two of them
turned out to be very valuable elements (one made 3 hours of a continuous
210 rate per hour), they all missed to a cerain degree the routine of
contesting which we knew from the operators of previous contests at OTxT.
They especially fell short a great deal in recognising calls, and
recognising opportunities for moving rare ones to other bands. But I guess,
that's how you learn the trade!
I am very proud however with the results, considering this is a "small"
multi-single station. A "small" multi-single station only has two operating
positions, one for the RUN station, and one for the multipliers. A "big" M/S
station has 6 operating positions, one for each band (like IQ4A). Our local
friendly competitors from OT5L fall in that category category as well, with
6 shacks spread over a large terrain. At OT5T (ON4UN) all is done in a 12 ft
by 12 ft shack!
Heree's the raw beakdown:
BAND QSO ZONES CTRIES
160 176 11 61
80 588 23 84
40 727 33 110
20 1744 39 135
15 1221 35 129
10 88 31 53
Total QSO's: 4544 (3914 in 1994)
Total multipliers: 833 (884 in 1994)
This may have been the last time we used the OTxT call in a contest. There
have been enough problems with mixing our call -OT5T- up with OT5A, OT5L,
OT5K etc... In the CW contest we'll use the good old ON4UN call...
See you in the CW contest (probably monoband 160, 80 or 40).
73
John, ON4UN
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
john.devoldere@box.eunet.be
Call us in all major 1995 contests: OT5T or ON4UN
John Devoldere (ON4UN-AA4OI)
POBOX 41
B-9000 Ghent (Belgium)
>From Swanson, Glenn, KB1GW" <gswanson@arrl.org Tue Oct 31 21:31:00 1995
From: Swanson, Glenn, KB1GW" <gswanson@arrl.org (Swanson, Glenn, KB1GW)
Subject: "2 letters bad, 3 letters good?"
Message-ID: <309695DC@arrl.org>
Hey Danny,
My wife and I might be able to cut a fellow ham a deal on some
property that is in a part of the sitting room just outside Europe.
(Cape Cod is closer--but it was recently sold to N6BV, I hear...)
73! Glenn, KB1GW
- - - - - - - -
"Leave it to the W1 "European sitting room" to...[complain]."
"...am I whining about the NE again? hmm"
----------
>From: Danny Eskenazi
>To: cq-contest
>Subject: "2 letters bad, 3 letters good?"
>
>From aa4lr@radio.org (Bill Coleman AA4LR) Tue Oct 31 21:22:37 1995
From: aa4lr@radio.org (Bill Coleman AA4LR) (Bill Coleman AA4LR)
Subject: Last two letters...
Message-ID: <v01520d07acbc3f9776d2@[205.160.29.40]>
>Randy Thompson <k5zd@iconics.com> wrote:
>>[...]
>>But, we need to have a convention as to which two letters they are
>>giving. It should always be the last two letters of the call.
>
>I think the convention should be the last two letters, said immediately after
>the the rest of the call.
>
>I suggest that those of us to whom the "last two" nonsense is annoying should
>make an effort to educate these folks (politely of course). Something like
>"full callsign only" or some such. We don't want to scare them away, just
>change the behavior.
The problem with this, as I see it, is the reality of the pile up
situation. When DX1BIG states "full calls only, QRZed" and all you hear is
"<garblegarblegarble> Delta Uniform"
DX1BIG: "The Delta Uniform station, 59 xx..."
"...."
Now, what benefit did DX1BIG get from that full call exchange? Nothing.
Further, it frustrated some poor fellow with a longish call. As far as he
can tell, only the last character or so got through the pileup.
I think that's the primary reason why this "last two" type of operating is
so insidious. Sometimes, all you get through is a character or two. Since
that is all it appears the pile up station is taking down, why transmit any
more information?
The truth of the matter (as any experienced contest operator knows) is that
getting a full callsign moves everything along faster. So, even when you do
only copy the last two, everyone needs to keep sending full calls. That's
tough on the less skilled / experienced stations fighting it out in the
pile ups.
Perhaps an occasional "I'll work everyone faster with full calls, please."
Might help.
> Maybe a short article in QST? If we don't make an
>effort to counteract the bad habits they'll never get fixed. I suspect that
>there are more people out there trying to enforce "last two" than there are
>trying to actively discourage it.
I did see a blurb in QST some time ago about the merits of using full
calls. Of course, with all the list and funky net operation the "last two"
seems to have become entrenced.
What I want to know is, why is it when I'm running stations on 10m at a
leisurely pace, calling CQ two or three times in a row with no answers, do
I get stations that call me (after a long pause) with the last two?
Perhaps it is just a simple lack of confidence?
Bill Coleman, AA4LR Mail: aa4lr@radio.org
Quote: "The same light shines on vineyards that makes deserts." -- Steve
Hackett
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