[PaQSO] The Contest 2011

[Goody K3NG]

<soapbox warning>

I'm convinced the 75m "DX Window" is in place merely to give some
people a slice of spectrum to monitor and chase people off of.  Yes,
it's a gentleman's agreement, but it seems the people there are
anything but gentlemen.  And call me crazy, but I consider the whole
band a DX window.  80 is what it is.  Like some big cities it can be a
nice place to visit, it has good and bad neighborhoods, but I wouldn't
want to live there.

Regarding the comments about the mobile frequencies for the Party,
personally I forget each year where it is and I may have inadvertently
called CQ there myself.  Often it's tough to find an open spot and
that frequency may be the only open one around.  I go to great lengths
to call QRL? or "is the frequency in use?" and find an open frequency.
 All too often I hear people bump up against other stations,
especially on phone.  You can't tell me that someone 1 kc away from a
busy frequency can't hear the QSO going on.  But I digress.  If I've
ever operated on a mobile frequency, it certainly wasn't intentional
and I would yield the frequency to a mobile op if asked.

I can sympathize with the mobile stations, but we all have crosses to
bear in the type of operation we choose.  As a QRP station, there were
multiple times I had stations hop right on my frequency and start
calling CQ, without even a QRL? from them.  To add insult to injury,
after I send a string of QRLs, they just keep calling CQ.  It just
comes with the territory, and I move to another frequency and carry on
calling CQ.

While I have the floor here, a couple other items I have to mention to
the studio audience:

If you're busting a pileup to work what is obviously a rare county,
please don't ask the station what their callsign is.  You can wait
until he calls QRZ again and get the callsign, or better yet listen
beforehand and get his callsign.  Asking for their callsign,
especially when the station has been identifying between each QSO
shows that you haven't been listening and/or you are merely
pileup-busting.

Also, if you've just busted a pileup to work that rare county, please
don't ask the station what the abbreviation is for their county, or
even worse, give over the air your three or four guesses as to what it
may be.  This isn't Jeopardy.  Finish the QSO, look it up, and
remember it for next year.  The 67 counties haven't changed for a long
time and probably won't again in our lifetimes.  Make your fellow PA
Partiers proud and learn the abbreviations or use a program that does
autosuggest for counties and sections.

If you're in a rare county and you have a pileup going, there's no
need to give your callsign several times in between QSOs and announce
your county, or ceremonially call CQ between each QSO.  The fifty
stations calling you know where you are and your callsign, hence the
reason for the pileup.  A short QRZed and your call will suffice, it
makes for better timing, and it will alleviate the pileup quicker.

When you're giving a report to another station, you don't need to give
their callsign.  They know their callsign and they know you're talking
to them; your time is better spent sending the report, especially when
the band is crowded or there is QSB.

And on the topic of dupes....please, folks, just work dupes and sort
them out later.  Most contest logging programs will let you work dupes
and they properly sort them out in the scoring.  It takes longer to
explain to the other station where and when they worked you, and
chances are they have your callsign from the previous QSO screwed up,
otherwise they wouldn't be working you again.  (...or they're paper
logging, not that there's anything wrong with that, as they say on
Seinfeld....)

My two shekels....or "just sayin' " as the kids like to say :-)

73
Goody
K3NG