[Today’s run:\u00a0 Watson Road\u00a0 3.5 miles\u00a0 (W & D)]<\/p>\n
I had some time today to participate a bit in the ARRL CW Sweepstakes ham radio contest.\u00a0 The goal of this particular contest is to contact stations in the US and Canada.\u00a0 If you can get all of the “sections”, which are states or parts of states as detailed on the ARRL section list, you can make what they call a “clean sweep”.<\/p>\n
There are two general ways to work these contests. First, you can tune around and look for stations that are calling for contest contacts.\u00a0 This is called “Search and Pounce”. You might be searching for a particular station, or you could just try to contact everyone who is calling.\u00a0 But your frequency changes as you do this.<\/p>\n
The second method is called “CQing” because CQ is the morse code shorthand for “I want to make a contact”.\u00a0 You try to find an empty frequency, then you start calling for contacts.\u00a0 This is also called “running” a frequency.\u00a0 So you and pounce or you can run.<\/p>\n
99.9% of my contest experience up until recently has been S&P.\u00a0 The reason for that is when calling CQ you have to be ready for someone to answer, and you want to understand what he is sending you.\u00a0 If you S&P you can tune around and listen in to other conversations.\u00a0 If you miss something in the contest exchange you can just loaf around and hear that station you just spoke to make his next contact.\u00a0 That way if your morse code speed isn’t so good you can figure out over a few repetitions the parts of the exchange that you missed.<\/p>\n
I have to tell you, that is a terrible way to try to maximize your contest score because you waste a lot of time. I should know.\u00a0 But it is kind of fun.<\/p>\n
Anyway, the last couple of HF contests I have worked up the courage to find a spot and call CQ.\u00a0 And I have found some benefits.\u00a0 The main one is that I don’t have to keep putting my frequency into the log.\u00a0 My radio is an older style that does not have a connection to the computer.\u00a0 I use a computer for logging, but I have to enter the frequency by hand.\u00a0 So that gets to be kind of a drag when I’m tuning all around.<\/p>\n
So I found a frequency that wasn’t completely crowded and I started calling CQ.\u00a0 The first couple of contacts I had to ask for a lot of repeats.\u00a0 But after a few I got the hang of it.\u00a0 And I kind of liked it.<\/p>\n
I did not get a clean sweep.\u00a0 But I had fun and hope to do even better next time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Today’s run:\u00a0 Watson Road\u00a0 3.5 miles\u00a0 (W & D)] I had some time today to participate a bit in the ARRL CW Sweepstakes ham radio contest.\u00a0 The goal of this particular contest is to contact stations in the US and Canada.\u00a0 If you can get all of the “sections”, which are states or parts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ham-radio","category-operating"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1696"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1700,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions\/1700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}