<snipped the rest out>
K0XP sez: ??I could go on and on about this, but am already smelling of sour
grapes, and would sooner or later raise somebody's hackles. So I'll shut
up after pointing out that the great, late Fred Laun, K3ZO (bless
his departed soul), flatly refused to send any faster than about 24 - 26
WPM and STILL usually managed to work more people over the entire period
of a contest than most DXpeditions manage to work over the same time
period on any band while sounding like a runaway woodchuck.
So, to repeat my question: how the hell do you get these QRQ fellows
to QRS??
Steve, K0XP??
- - -
de VE9AA:
GM Steve & Everyone,
With respect. May Fred/K3ZO RIP. I liked Fred a lot.
Nobody is winning major contests at 24-26wpm. It's purely a contest math
thing. There's only so much time in a contest to work with and every second
counts. You can get roughly twice as many characters sent at 50wpm than you
could at 25wpm.
(Of course sending at 100wpm would not work because nobody can copy that),
but certainly most ops can copy their call at 30, 40 or even 50wpm. If it's
a known exchange (like CQ Zone #) then it's easy to make a QSO. (SS would
likely not work running @ 50wpm for obvious reasons)
You don?t even need to take my word for it. Please don't.
Go to the online scoreboard during or 3830scores.com very soon after any
major contest(CQWW,ARRLDX,CW Sprint etc). Go to the RBN. Search any
callsign in the top five. The speeds are all reported by the RBN.
They?re ALL sending faster than 24-26wpm. It's just contest math. Nothing
more. A few seem to want guys to send slower, but you can't fight the math.
That's why SO2R is also popular. You can squeeze in more QSOs.
If 33-36wpm CW bothers you, then you need to learn to listen faster.
(BTW, I am not being belligerent; I put my money where my mouth is.) When I
got back into contesting in 2010 after a hiatus, I was rock solid at only
26-27wpm but found in my years away speeds in general had gone up, so I put
a mobile rig in my car (see qrz.com) and listened to 20M CW for an hour a
day M-F for a year, then pushed and pushed and pushed myself with on-air
practice (home+mobile) and Morserunner so I can keep up with most (but not
all) contest ops today. QRQ ops don't bother me like they seem to some
folks. It just drives me to practice more.
Asking QRQ contest ops (or DXpeditions) to slow down won't work. You can't
fight the math. If they want to make more Q's, they need to send faster (or
lose the contest or come home from that rare Island with xx thousands less
Q's).
GL in your endeavours !
dit dit
CU (all of a sudden!) in the next one.
73 de Mike VE9AA
Mike - Keswick Ridge, NB, Canada
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