In a message dated 3/8/2016 15:17:23 GMT Standard Time, knason00@gmail.com
writes:
You wrote: “But how, exactly, is a little pistol to procure a run frequency
when every open band is packed wall to wall, and stacked three deep, with
big guns calling CQ?”
People are painting the worst case scenario here. I'm a small station and
can almost always find a place to call CQ in major CW and RTTY contests,
usually upband quite a ways on a boundary that shifts up and down during
daily propagation cycles. On CW and RTTY it's easy to get spotted by skimmers
(be aware of the two minute refresh cycle).
I can't speak for every small S&P station, but I can be easily intimidated
by calling CQ on CW at 24 wpm and getting calls back at 35-40 wpm and by
multiple callers all on the exact same spotted frequency. Then there's
often someone so far off frequency (or zero beat) that I'm not sure if he's
calling me not.
On RTTY things are easier. I expect all calls to be exactly on my
frequency and just need to figure out how to handle the small pileups I get.
I
have marcos for that.
On either CW or RTTY I don't even want to talk about QRPers at ESP level
where the only thing I can make out is my call (I've memorized it) and
/QRP.
On SSB I have too small a signal to run or even contest effectively, so I
have no experience there.
In each contest I need to figure out the optimal S&P/running split. With
my station if I make 25% of my QSOs running, I'm happy.
73,
Ken, AB1J
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