For WQ6X CW Contests are about Filling-in the GaPs

In preparation for the 2o26 WPX ("Weird Prefix") contest, looking back to the "unfinished Blog" archive, it was noticed that a Blog was started shortly after last year's Cw contest and ended up
on sideline awaiting use.  Then an irony struck me.  Let's begin with what I wrote nearly a year ago:

• Now that the WPX (Weird Prefix) Cw contest is behind us, the 1st couple of weekends
  in June slow down to a near-crawl, at least in the HF spectrum, at any rate.  Co relatively,
  Blog postings largely diminish (altho I am working on a couple of Blog entries soon to be released).  Significant contest activity resumes with the All Asian Cw contest, the weekend
  before Field Day (FD).

For 2o26, the month of May brings us 5 weekends, relegating the WPX contest to the FIFTH
weekend instead of its usual FOURTH weekend, leaving a relatively long GAP before that 5th weekend.  In general, there are 5-things we can do with that "extra time" between events.

• We can catch up on Sleep
• We can conduct hardware/software tests for the radio setup.
• We can seek smaller contests (like smaller state QSO parties) for practice.
• We can clean up the [usually] morass-mess of cabling between equipment units.
• We can listen to EU or JA contest activities happening domestically via way of SDR
  snooping-in on their activities - a "learn by listening" exercise.

While many of the in-between events are mixed-mode (Cw & Ssb), I often opt to run ONLY the CW side of the events, saving my voice and my aural-sanity as weird dialects are often even weirder when the Signal-to-Noise (SNR) increases.  To a large degree, Cw copy is immune from copy-obliteration.

Additionally, running Cw GiGs offers yet another opportunity to play with the Stereo-CW concept,
I have written so much about.  ([CLICK HERE] to see some of those Blogs)

Sometimes it seems like CW is about filling in the GAPS - then again, filling in the GAPS often
leads to better Cw contest operations in the near future.

What do YOU Do between major radiosport contest GiGs?

LeT's share ideas along these lines.