Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
Vic wrote:
In order to time your calls in a pileup, you need to hear the DX station
start working another station or send TU after finishing a QSO.
--------------------------
In that case I'm not sending, so I don't need to hear between dits.
You're sending from the time that the DX finishes his QSO with one
station and until he starts a QSO with another (hopefully you). A DX
pileup can be 10 KHz (or more) wide. Generally one tries to find the
station that the DX is working, deduce the direction he is tuning, and
be in the right place. Sometimes it's very hard to get the guy he's
working, because lids will call continuously. I think of it like
hunting big game (not that I would ever do that, I like animals!) in
that you need to be in position and take your shot. Anything that
improves your ability to be in the right place at the right time makes
your shots more accurate. Shooting blind gets you nothing, but the more
*good* shots you take, the better your chances. This is why a second
receiver can be useful, with audio from the DX in one ear and the pileup
in the other ear. But it's absolutely necessary to hear him start
working the station so you know who to look for.
I suspected that might be the most useful place for between-the-dits extreme
QSK, where stations pile on top of each other without exercising any
discipline at all. It does little good to keep shouting while the person
whose attention you are trying to attract has responded to someone else,
although I rather feel that if I'm QRMing the other person it was only
because he/she was QRMing me by calling on top of me. I never start calling
if I hear others calling before I start, and I expect anyone who responds
more slowly to wait their turn. I know, that's not how many contesters
behave.
In an 'asymmetric' situation, such as a station in NNY who has just come
on near the end of the Sweepstakes, there are lots of people that want
to work the running station. So everytime he stands by, a bunch of
people call. There are different strategies for getting through: you
can run 1.5KW and have an enormous antenna and try to blot out the other
callers (not as easy as it sounds because of propagation differences),
or you can use timing and placement to sneak by. Since I normally run
100 watts to a modest antenna, I have to do the latter. What I like to
do especially is wait for the first big blob of calls to drop a little
and then shoot my call in at high speed. It's very important to have
QSK because if you do this and the station comes back to someone, you
better stop sending immediately.
Contesting is too often just a 'barroom brawl' on the Ham bands.
That's why I disagree with those who claim that contesting produces useful
skills for anything but contesting. That's like saying that being able to
hold your own in a barroom brawl is good training for how to behave in
polite company.
I'll stick with polite company where people don't normally shout over me or
try to interrupt in the middle of a word or even in mid-sentence!
I don't think good contesters do these things. I find that some
contests feel more like a competition among gentlemen than a brawl.
There will always be lids and those that cheat in some way, but in my
opinion, there are more lids among the DXers than the contesters.
--
73,
Vic, K2VCO
Fresno CA
http://www.qsl.net/k2vco
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