The weekend opened with the Worked All Europe (WAE) Ssb contest and the FOC Cw QSO party.
The FOC QP is a 24-hour GiG, while the WAE is a Full-48 hour extravaganza; which ironically I DiD NoT participate in as full-Ssb contests are not effectively doable from the Alameda location, unless completely function key driven (as in the state QSO Parties).
The overall weekend goal was to play around in
the FOC GiG and two QSO parties on Friday evening
and Saturday in between other activities in Alameda and then the 4-hour NA SPRINT. With individual logs in N1MM+ for each contest, I had to remember which callsigns went with which contest.
At 00:00z the FOC is over, while at the same time the 4 hour NA SPRINT contest on Cw takes over. However for me, the 2 QSO parties were still in full swing; the TXQP ended for the day @02:00z and the ALQP contest was completely over at 03:00z (an only 12 hour affair). Eventually, I ran out of new TX/AL stations to work, giving the go-ahead to create a set of NA SPRINT macros for N1MM+ and dive in. My SPRINT participation was simply to declare "let the record state that WQ6X has NoT abandoned the NA SPRINT contests [necessarily]".
If you've never run a SPRINT contest, your 1st time will be a JOLT-Awakening. Altho, I never used the bandmap (i.e. unassisted) I was too lazy to shut it down. Telling N1MM to remove the band spots, works for about 2 minutes. The Cw skimmer software (behind the spotting system) goes into hyper-report mode during a Cw-SPRINT or Rtty-SPRINT contest. It not only can look intimidating, it can become even a bit scary. For Ssb Sprints, very little is reported to the spotting system, relatively freeing us from this insanity.
up the opportunity to switch bands and watch the Swr as the elements are tuned for each setting.
LooKs like the upgrade was successful.
The Texas QSO Party (TQP)
The Texas QSO Party is how Saturday morning started up. While TQP began at 14:00z I never made it to the operating position until a little after 16:00z. Throughout the weekend 15-meters was checked for the hoped-for openings that never seemed to materialize. (The E. Coast had a S. American opening and a shot at Europe. The Left Coast was in complete silence.) 
The only guess I have is that this was a remotely run station that started an auto-CQ and then lost
the IP-connection making it unable to press [ESC] and stop it. As I tuned the band looking for QP
stations, this CQ call and unknowingly-futile pileup would go on and on. It is for this reason I NEVER
use auto-CQ's when running the NX6T facility remotely - internet outages can occur at any moment.
the OP-time we could not find time for on Saturday; in particular for WQ6X, making Ssb contacts. Additionally, the extra 6 hours gave extra time to put an extra 25 counties in the log for extra points
in the ending score; an extra if I ever saw one.
or "Q6?" or "6X?". I had to repeat my call AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN to make it thru the walls
of W8 & K7 stations; not to mention Billy Bob (KK4xxx) and his brother (KB4xxx) who really didn't know WHO they were calling or why, but felt they needed to throw their callsign in for good measure.
Back in 2014 when running as WP2/WQ6X I was on the other end of this mess.
To explain the DX station's frustration, I wrote a couple of Blog entries about this, namely:
In State/Area QSO parties working an in-state station is often JUST LIKE working a rare Dx station. There is a correct way to make it work and there is the IDIOT's way. Which method do you use?
If it wasn't for running 585 watts with a 3-el Stepp-IR pointing right at Texas, I probably would never have gotten thru these idiots most of the time. Otherwise, WQ6X was consistently breaking pileups on the first call (especially when there were no IDIOTs transmitting out of turn).
The Alabama QSO Party (AQP)
The Alabama QSO Party was the alternative to working Texas stations and cavorting with FOC Cw stations. AQP is typical of so many state QSO parties in that there is hardly enough in-State stations to make this worth putting in a lot of time with.I have TWO recommendations for this QSO party:
- Expand this event from 12 hours to 18 (or more) by adding some operating time on Sunday,
or start earlier and/or end later on Saturday.
By the time 03:00z rolls around, the Left coast is just getting an opening on 80/160 meters and your contest is already over. Adding Sunday to the schedule gives us Left-coasters a 2nd shot at Alabama on 15 meters should no opening occur on Saturday. - Recruit more Alabama stations to play in your own contest; and/or convince OPs in nearby states to jump in their vehicles and drive through parts of Alabama. Reserving a 1x1 callsign (Ex: K4M, W4W, N4A, etc.) especially for this event will reduce confusion from a W5 station working a W4 (Alabama) contest, A 100:1 (Us to You) ratio does NoT win converts to your QSO Party.
The NA SPRINT Cw Contest, while only 4 hours, is the most insanely-frenzied radiosport contest you will ever encounter. The intensity-level of this event is so intense that it out-intensifies most other contest intensities, except maybe the intense WAE Cw contest with its intense QTC message format.
In this contest, the average code speed jumps from 24-25 up to 35+ wpm. While I CAN copy at those speeds, too many copy-errors can occur, requiring even-more-time-wasted repeats. For the 2.5 hours WQ6X ran the Saturday SPRINT contest, N1MM's code sending speed NEVER exceeded
23-wpm. Amazingly, when I would call CQ-NA, well known high-speed stations would actually
slow-down to my speed-level, and, NoT surprisingly, no repeats were ever needed.
Even worse than sending 35+ wpm are the IDIOTS who call CQ NA and then wait a mere 0.85 seconds before pressing the F1 CQ key again. By the time I could reach over and press F4 to send
my callsign they are halfway thru another CQ. You should realize, that once somebody hears your call and realizes it is NoT a DUP, it takes AT LEAST 1.5 seconds to press the callsign key. It should come as no surprise that 10 CQ calls were often needed for these stations to get one reply; not that we couldn't hear the station, or even that they were sending too fast; the problem was that we "couldn't get a word in edgewise". SLOW DOWN Operators - you are WASTING MORE TIME THAN YOU ARE SAVING by running at lightning speed.
I wrote up variations of this problem as BEEF #17 in Part-4 of the multi-part Blog series entitled
The Role of Respect in Radiosport. Next weekend will bring us the frenzied 4-hour NA SPRINT RTTY contest with the same problems transposed into RTTY operations - WILD!
Now, it is because of the above intensity-mess that many people HATE radiosport contests and the NA SPRINT in particular. However, the time you waste BITCHING about these 4-hour contests often far exceeds the contest duration itself.
One of the reasons to check into the WA7BNM contest calendar on a weekly basis is not necessarily to find events to join in, but to have an understanding of what to expect on a given weekend, allowing you to plan your operating activities AROUND contest periods. Then again, there is an old saying
"if you can't AVOID'em, then JOIN'em - something to THINGK about.
What about You?
Did YOU play in any radiosport events this weekend?
If Not, WHY Knot?
If SO, is WQ6X in YOUR Log?
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