I've been practicing for WRTC with a phone pile-up tape that my teammate,
Randy, K5ZD had. Today, the first day my kids were out of school, they
wanted me to play ping pong with them, which I'm usually readily willing to
do. But it was pretty hot today and the table is outside, so I told them I'd
play tomorrow morning. They had seen me practicing with the pile-up tape, so
my daughter (11) said, "What if I listen to the tape and get 20 right, will
you play ping pong?" Of course, that was the right button to push so we
agreed. My son (13) took up the challenge also and my daughter, after
listening for about 30 seconds to "practice" told him to go first. He had a
lot of letters and numbers on the page when the tape ended, got 13 calls
correct and was justifiably proud of himself, not being familiar with any
phonetics or call sign structure. Then he asked me how many I got. When I
told him 57 (my first listen a week ago I got 53,) you should have seen the
look on his face. He said, "You can't get that many. That's not possible."
My daughter didn't listen through the whole tape because she kept wanting to
repeat the first minute so she could get one right.
The booby prize is we're going to a movie and out to dinner tonight and ping
pong will wait for tomorrow.
For the record, I found this tape somewhat easier than the sample from the
WRTC committee as this one was all US calls. I'm sending it back to Randy so
we can compare scores and see who will do the phone pile-up tape in
Slovenia.
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