Have You Read the Rules Lately?

It has been said that "Life is a dress-rehearsal". 

A Dress-Rehearsal?  Rehearsal for WHUT? 

THIS IS IT!

In this 4th installment in the Creative Competition in Radiosport and Toastmasters
series I have ONE Question for you: Have You READ the Rules Lately?

When mentoring those new to radiosport contesting and Toastmasters Speech contests,
I often ask something on the order of: "In order to prepare for an upcoming competition,
what is the 1st thing you should do?"  Invariably I hear all kinds of answers; often all but
the most important one: RTFRM - Read the Rules Thoroughly.

You've heard me declare: "When in Doubt CHEAT (but within the rules).  In order to cheat w/in
the rules you need to know EXACTLY WHAT THE RULES ARE".  Rules let you know specifically What is Allowed, What is Specifically NoT Allowed and in-general what will be expected out of your participation during the event.

For example, in the NAQP radiosport events, transmitter power is limited to 100-watts or less
and using internet spotting assistance is NoT Allowed.  When you submit a Single-OP-Assisted
High Power log, it should come as no surprise that your log submission will end up at the bottom
of the final results listed under the CHECKLOG category.

In Toastmasters, some of the constraints contestants should be aware of are: Speaking Time, Speaking Area and Speaking Title.  I encourage would-be contestants to read over the judge
balloting materials.  Also use the judging form in your club speaker evaluations.  This will give
you practice in looking at what makes a GooD speech and what YOU will be judged on.

Winning speech contests involves being aware of numerous subtleties you will be judged on and
then letting go of all those details.  For radiosport contests we need to be aware of all the subtle things that can impact communication to different areas of the world.  In BOTH of these contests,
the REAL Secret to winning (Being the Best You can Be) can be summed up in ONE Word: PRACTICE!  [Practice! Practice, practice]

In speech contests as well as in radiosport, it's all about Rehearsal and Practice --- Practice and Rehearsal.  In order to rehearse speeches properly, rather than D/L a Toastmaster Timer APP,
I wrote my Own.  Doing this "taught" me a lot about what "time" is really all about. 

For radiosport activities I have also written support APPs, including a Dual Clock utility
and the WQ6X Beacon & Space-WX tracker.  Writing the Dual-clock APP taught me a LoT
about time and time differences during worldwide radiosport events. 

In radiosport, you can record the audio/video of your next contest and review it after the
event is over.  Playing it back, any mistakes you made will often be glaringly obvious. 

If you can copy Cw (Morse Code), there is a set of YouTube videos documenting an experiment where I ran the JAN-2011 NAQP Cw contest while monitoring my E-E-G from location FP-1

(Front-left Forehead).

        [x] - WQ6X monitoring EEG during NAQP Cw Aug 2011

                (Search & Pounce) - Video #1

        [x] - WQ6X monitoring EEG during NAQP CW Aug-2011

                while running a Frequency - Video #2
        [x] - WQ6X monitoring EEG during NAQP CW Aug-2011

                while running a Frequency - Video #3

        [x] - WQ6X monitoring EEG during NAQP CW Aug-2011

                while running a Frequency - Video #4

        [x] - WQ6X monitoring EEG during NAQP CW Aug-2011

                while running a Frequency - Video #5
Listening to these videos after the fact I can hear the numerous mistakes made throughout
the contest events.  Because I know what to look for, the Brain-Pharts throughout these videos,
are to me, quite evident.

From the 2014 Dx-Expedition to St. Croix (WP2) I made a number of videos while running frequencies after the RTTY context was over.  Overall, these videos document the proper way to run a frequency:

• [x] - WQ6X/WP2 Running Europe on 15-Meter Ssb
• [x] - WQ6X/WP2 Running working stations on 10-Meter Ssb
• [x] - WQ6X/WP2 Working stations on 17-Meter SSB

For Toastmaster's contests video your speech rehearsals and study them. 
Review winning speeches from previous years.  Additionally, live videos (unfortunately after the fact) can teach a LoT.  It's relatively-easy to point out what we "should have done" after the fact.  In my case, having videos from the 2019 Speech/Evaluation contest participation gives me a LoT of "FooD for ThoT" for next year (being an Area Director disallowed me from contest participation in 2020).

• [x] - 2019 Division-A International Speech Contest
• [x] - 2019  Division-A Evaluation Contest

Having reviewed the above videos many times, I have only ONE Question:
CAN I GET A DO-OVER????

What about you?  Do YOU want a DO-Over?

If so then Read the Rules and Practice, Practice, PRACTICE