Most CW contesting takes place at 25-30 WPM. 20 WPM is QRS. A few speed
merchants bang away at 35 WPM or above. I worked most of CQWW CW this
weekend QRP with good antennas. I was able to get through pileups by
sending my call at 30-32 WPM often fitting it in between others sending
theirs. A station calling at 15 WPM takes twice as long to send his call
(and stations with long calls take even longer), filling up much of the
available space. I found this very frustrating when the QRS station was
in W0 or the east coast and I'm in W6 trying to work EU stations with 5W.
The CQWW exchange is stupid simple. 599xy, where xy is the station's
zone. The US, Canada, Russia, and Australia are the only countries
having more than one zone, and most contest logging software fills that
in automatically when you enter a call. So if you're in the US or
Canada, for 99% of contacts, all you need to copy is the call.
Our group, W6GJB, W6JTI, and me, has won Field Day 1A Battery several
times. When calling CQ, we usually work around 25 wpm, and toward the
end will slow down a bit. I dropped in on N6TV working SS on Sunday
afternoon at W7RN a year ago. He was working at about 25 wpm. He's won
SS from that QTH, and often works DX contests from K3LR. The guys at
W3LPL were working at about 25 WPM this weekend. All three are super
stations with spectacular antenna farms.
FWIW, many serious contesters, including me, have found that even when a
station calls at a speed much lower than we're working, they still copy
our exchange when we slow down only a bit, which suggests that either
they've listened to us for a while to copy our exchange before calling
or that they're using a CW reader.
And another FWIW -- putting a lot of hours into a CW contest will
improve your code speed significantly!
73, Jim K9YC
On 11/26/2017 6:49 PM, Bob McGraw K4TAX wrote:
I agree, in fact I'd suppose as the CW speed the number of competent
operators decreases proportionally. Now I'm not saying "contest at
5 WPM" but certainly there are more that can copy 15 WPM than 50
WPM. Just sayin'..........so for us slow folks and old folks.......QRS.
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