[ILQSO] slow speed cw

[Danny Pease]

I agree with Hank, CW decoders are very poor as a general rule. And asking a station to QRS seldom gets a station to actually slow down to the slower stations speed (I know this from experience). Like I said in an earlier post, most ops tend to just space out their characters more when they try to slow down, rather than actually cutting the speed back. With most memory keyers it is a very simple adjustment. With some of the logging program that send CW, a simple keystroke or two works.

Now, a question for you cw ops, in a typical ILQP or any other QSO party, how many times do you call CQ? Out of that huge number of times, how many times do you get a response? I am going to guess 80% or more of your CQ's go unanswered during a smaller contest like most QSO parties. I realize when the rate is high, you do not want to mess with having to slow down, but how about when the rates are way low? What do you do then? Change bands, change modes? Take a break? How many of you actually try slowing your speed down to 10 or 15 wpm for a while to see if you pick up a few of the slower ops? This is the same idea as stopping during a good run and asking for weak mobiles that you may miss before they move on. When rates slow down, we tend to look for something that works better. Slowing down from 30 to 15 or 10 WPM may pick up a few Q's you could have missed otherwise.

I am not really pushing more CW activity for the ILQP (I think almost everyone will agree the current activity is predominately CW now), but I would like to see more operators that want to try CW to have a good experience with it. If they find it too hard to do, they may never try it again.

Danny  NG9R
 

-----Original Message-----
From: ilqso-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:ilqso-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Hank Greeb
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2008 11:45 AM
To: Illinois QSO Party
Subject: Re: [ILQSO] slow speed cw

When replying to a CQ, just send your call, NOT the other's call.  And, 
DO send at YOUR speed.  If the other op doesn't slow down, consider him 
a LID, which he is.

And, whilst CW decoders work, none that I've seen are as good as the ear 
in the midst of contest QRM/QRN, and LIDS who send on top of other 
stations.  Practice, practice, practice maketh perfect.

73 de n8xx Hg

James Funk wrote:
> For those with an "effective CW speed" of around 10 wpm, there are some possibilities:
>
> 1) Search and Pounce, find a station calling CQ, listen to some exchanges from him,  get a letter or two at a time, call *AT YOUR SPEED* when you "have it", work the guy. (Note: we ALL started this way!!)
> 2) CQ *AT YOUR SPEED*.  Callers should slow down to *YOUR SPEED*.  If they don't, either ask "PSE QRS" or ignore them.  
> 3) Use one of the software programs that decodes CW.  I've never tried them, but they apparently work fairly well?
>
> In most of the QSO parties, most stations send 20-30 wpm.  One exception is K8MR, who is more like 40 unless he gets rolling, then the sky is the limit.
>
> In some of the DX tests, some DX stations send so fast I can't copy them. One HC station whose call escapes me at the moment (HC2G?) is probably above 50 wpm.....
>
> 73, Jim N9JF
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