Many of you will be thinking "I could have told you so" but using the
1x1 special "Thanksgiving" callsign in WWCW was a Major Mistake. The
list of stations that accepted our W6T callsign without a question is
short and distinguished. It became clear to us that we had entered
(unintentionally) into a training endeavor for the DX as we threw them
our unusual call. Many just figured they had a partial and went back to
someone else. Many of those who picked us up right away would often
question it and ask for confirmation (sorry for taking the extra time
for the QSO). But as the contest drew on we found that operator skills
were becoming sharper and fewer queries were received. Also when we
worked stations on multiple bands they generally (but not always) found
it easier to log the 1x1 callsign. In short, if you're going to do
nothing but RUN, the 1x1 works fine, but for S&P, DON'T GO THERE!!! BIG
MISTAKE!!!
I thought we were past this problem but there were several stations that
*refused* to work us saying QSO B4. (You know who you are). Obviously
they had busted someone else's call down to W6T and now we could not
pick up the multiplier. What happened to "Log 'em and move on"? The
software will mark the QSO as a dupe on their log but if they don't
actually work me, I have NOTHING in mine!
Another piece of confusion was one Middle East station sending "TU" at
the end of each exchange. Did anyone else find this to be a problem?
It seemed that at each "TU" the pileup jumped in; I don't know how he
could copy the exchange from anyone.
Highlights: Swapping first QSO of the contest with 5V7A on 40M. Working
8Q7DV on 40M long path Sunday morning and YB1AQS on 10M long path with
100w.
Zones: Missed 39 (never heard) and 2!!! VE2UA apparently kept moving
around to reduce the pileup and I never found him again!
Arrrrggghhhhh!!! How about some visiting ops to Zone 2 for WWCW in '98?
Kudos: Congrats to the expedition ops, especially 5A2A making Zone 34 a
fairly easy catch! Thanks to all for being there and for giving us a
lot of fun over the weekend.
de W6T (Yes, that's all)
George, N6ZS
Lou, WA6SBS
(ex-J75A Feb '95)
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