[Elecraft] QRP and Contesting

[Andrew Moore]

Hi Jim -

Among the best ways to get better at something is to practice, and often a
better way is to practice while jumping into a live scenario (as opposed to
simulated or offline) before you're reasonably proficient. I wouldn't
recommend that approach for learning how to fly an airplane or drive a car,
but for learning a spoken language or improving CW sending, sure.
Non-contesting operation doesn't cease when big contests are running.

> Both of these problems are easily solved by using a contest logging
program, both to log and to send CW

There's not a lot you can do to change their behavior, so why not focus on
what you can control: Both could easily be solved by, when hearing a faint,
sloppy QRP station answering your call, simply ignoring them. A bad fist
should be easy to identify in a few seconds. Answer someone else, or call
CQ again. Their feelings might be hurt briefly, but they'll understand and
you won't waste time.

For many of us, maybe not the hard core contesters, the joy of contesting
is keying by hand and taking notes on paper, and don't have a lot of
interest in tying a computer to the radio and sending by keyboard
(excepting QRQ operation where using a keyboard is the only choice).

All that said, I understand your frustration.

73/72,
-Andrew NV1B
..


On Tue, Nov 8, 2022 at 4:52 PM Jim Brown <jim at audiosystemsgroup.com> wrote:

> I made more than 1,000 QSOs in Sweepstakes this weekend, and the most
> frustrating, by far, were from a couple of dozen QRPers who 1) never
> heard of dupe checking; and 2) sent by hand with pretty lousy fists.
> Late Sunday evening, while calling CQ on another band, I waited a couple
> of  minutes for a VA2 station to get a fill on the serial number from a
> QRPer who couldn't send it correctly, probably because he hadn't worked
> enough CW to have a decent fist. The problem was NOT signal strength. I
> had the same problem with half of the casual QRPers I worked.
>
> Both of these problems are easily solved by using a contest logging
> program, both to log and to send CW. This is not a slam on QRP operation
> -- I've worked a lot of contests QRP, and one of my best buddies, W6JTI,
> WINS or places in the top two or three in the many contests he enters
> QRP. Frank made 554 QSOs in SS last weekend, and made the sweep of all
> 84 sections (NOT easy with HIGH power).
>
> Why does this matter? Because MANY contesters take it seriously, and
> most can finish a Sweepstakes QSO in 30-40 seconds. Most of us, me
> included, are happy to work and encourage new contesters, but it's very
> frustrating when someone can't send CW due to lack of practice, and
> calls to work us a second or even a third time because he's too lazy to
> check of dupes, taking well over a minute to finish a QSO.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
>
>
>
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