Hello all:
Looks like we have a terrific team. See registration below.
Thanks for registering your CW Sprint team.
Team Name: South East Sprint Coalition
Team Members:
AA4CF
KY4F
K0EJ
WF3C
N4IQ
N4OX
K2SX
W4NZ
N4OGW
AA4GA
Registration recorded at: 2016-02-05 19:53:56Z
Your team registration info has been saved to the NCJ team database. If
you wish to update your team membership, please use the team
registration form to resubmit your team members. Please be sure to use
exactly the same team name, unless you are purposely wanting to change
the name.
73 de Boring Amateur Radio Club (cwsprintmgr at ncjweb.com)
Others in our geographical area will also be on Ad Hoc team, including
W4OC and KU8E. I will be unable to operate for most of Saturday
evening, but will be QRV when I am home and will try to work you all.
Please use the call I have registered you under. Please post your score
to 3830 as soon as possible. And please submit your log to NCJ within
seven days, which is the deadline for log submission. Don't worry about
putting your team name in the header of your Cabrillo log as the teams
are taken from the registration forms and not the logs. Do select
"South East Sprint Coalition" as your team from the pull down menu on
3830scores.com. You can put your own club in the Cabrillo header and in
your individual post to 3830.
A few tips. The most important one probably is that it helps to set up
two messages to be sent, depending on whether you have called someone or
if someone has called you.
If you call someone (and therefore will be keeping the frequency and
listening for callers, send your own call last). Such as KU8E 1 JOHN GA
K4BAI.
If someone has called you (and therefore you will be leaving the
frequency after the QSO, send your own call at the first). Such as KU8E
K4BAI 1 JOHN GA.
Yes the rules do require you to send both calls as a part of your
exchange. So, the call being sent at the end of an exchange should be a
signal to you that you call call that station as soon as he receives his
"TU" from the station he has called.
Of course, all of us hit the wrong F key once in a while, so this is not
an infallible system.
20 Meters will be going long early. So, start on 20M and progress down
to 40 and then 80. If you run out of rate on 80, go back to 40 as there
will be some stations (particularly on the west coast and SO2R stations)
there until the end.
Multipliers count per contest, not per band, so don't waste too much
time trying for a new mult on one band if you have already worked the
same mult on another band.
NA countries count as mults and there won't be a lot of activity outside
the US and Canada, so take the chance to work any other NA countries you
hear.
Activity will be mostly from about 020 to about 070 Khz on the bands.
Probably not quite so high in the 40M band due to RTTY QRM. The Mexican
RTTY contest will be going on at the same time as the Sprint and you
will have to work around RTTY signals at least on 40M. If there is a
lot of RTTY activity, the CW activity on 40M will slip lower in the band.
The FOC Marathon will be going on at the same time as the Sprint. If
you hear FOCers that you know, you might talk them into a QSO but the
information for their Marathon is RST + FOC# so that the information to
be exchanged is very different. Also, the FOC Marathon is a "closed
contest," so they are only looking for other FOC members to work. If
one calls you, maybe he (or she) will be willing to give you a #, name,
and SPC.
Also going on at the same time and on CW are: Vt QSO Party (RST + SPC
or VT county), Black Sea Cup Contest (RST + ITU zone or BSCC#), BC QSO
Party (RST + SPC or BC district), and for the first two hours of the
Sprint, the YL-OM Contest (RST + QSO#). The YL-OM is the only one where
the exchange is similar enough that you might make one to count for the
Sprint, if only you can get the YL to give you her name, and most of
them won't mind doing that.
If you are new to the Sprints, don't be intimidated by the speed some of
them are sending at. If it seems that you are missing most jump balls,
don't let that discourage you either. Just go to a clear frequency
(maybe high or low in the band) and send "CQ NA your call" and work the
ones who call you until you can get back into trying for jump balls.
Keep on for as much of the four hours as life and other responsibilities
will let you. Enjoy yourselves and try not to think of it as hard work.
After the more or less furious four hours is over, wind down a bit,
look at other scores on 3830 and make a note of ideas you have to
improve for the next time (in September of this year).
Ideally, unless you are SO2R (like N4OGW, W4NZ, and maybe K0EJ), you
would like to spend an equal amount of time on each of the three bands.
That means, if 20M is still open at 0120Z, you should consider moving
to 40M. You will probably move to 40M sooner than that because the
activity and propagation on 20 will probably drop your rate way down
sooner than 0120. If you haven't been to 80M yet and the time is 0240Z,
you should start thinking of moving to 80M.
If 20M was still open, but long, when you leave 20, you might do a quick
check back on 20 later and you might pick up some stray KL7 or rare VE
mult. Same for 80. If 80 is very noisy (I hope not), you may go back
to 40 sooner. The key is where can you keep up the highest rate and
secondarily on what band are you likely to be able to hear and work the
multipliers you don't have yet.
The Southeast Sprint Coalition was started by the late Bill Fisher,
W4AN, because none of the individual state clubs in the South East
seemed to be able to get up a team with ten members. Registration for a
team helps encourage those on teams to operate as much as they can, and
the result is more fun for them and for others in the contest.
Thanks again for playing on our team this year. 73, John, K4BAI.
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