As a little pistol I must admit that a lot of what I read here can be
intimidating. For instance, for years I have read the opinion that goes like
this: such-and-such behavior wastes valuable time in a contest. The behavior in
question is usually saying "Please copy...", or sending the other station's
call sign before sending your own exchange, or any number of things that irk
contesters who have little patience for such "wasteful" practices.
Most of these statements are highly ironic. To see why, tune in to the last few
hours of any contest, when stations can go several minutes on a frequency
calling CQ without an answer but keep pushing the button anyway. I'm in no way
begruding their right to call CQ; I'm saying that if you add up all of the
precious seconds "wasted" by those of us that say "please" or "QSL" or
whatever, that "wasted" time doesn't even come close to the time you spend
sitting on a quiet frequency looking for those last few contacts.
In other words, most stations are not time-limited in most contests, they are
'finding-another-Q' limited.
You may argue that it is worse to lose seconds in the first hours of the
contest when rates are higher, than in the last hours when rates drop. This
argument may have merit, but remember that presumably everybody is being
impacted more or less equally by the "wasters" and so all this does is change
the point of peak rate (as well as the peak rate itself) for each participant.
To me this is little different than everybody being affected by a solar flare.
You may argue that if your goal is to set a new world record then any deviation
from your precise idea of the perfect exchange has a greater negative impact
and there I might agree with you, unless you find yourself pushing the button a
lot at the end... in which case, maybe most contests are too long?
I submit that most of the "wasted seconds" arguments are moot and belong on the
Aargh! wiki page.
Al W6LX
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