There were several interesting posts about operating in the Sweepstakes contest this past weekend. Like many of those who commented, I consider myself a "casual contester." It's been a number of years since I put in as much time at SS as I did this weekend. I usually need some "help" to copy the 30+ wpm contest exchanges. I often spend several minutes trying to copy a station's exchange before sending my call in answer to their CQs.
This year I tried a few different ideas. In the past I've sometimes used a program called "CW Get" to copy the CW. With a cable from the speaker output to the soundcard input, this program does a good job of copying the perfect machine sent code, and even does a reasonable job on the good CW from a keyer and paddle. I also downloaded a logging program (N1MM Logger) on Saturday morning and installed that on my computer. After "a bit" of time trying to learn how to use the logger, I had it mostly configured, and even talking to my K2. This was pretty neat! I positioned various logger windows around my display so I could also see the copy window on CW Get. Maybe a similar arrangement would be helpful to others who like to "Search and Pounce." I even ventured to answer quite a few stations that were calling CQ before I copied their exchange. I also noticed something that surprised me quite a bit. I narrowed my K2 filters to 400 and 200 Hz. Most of the time I just tuned up the band, one station at a time, and seldom had interference from another station to contend with. (No, that didn't surprise me!) What did surprise me was the number of stations answering a CQ "way" off frequency. I'd barely hear them over the speaker, and would see a "spike" on the CW Get frequency display that was 100 Hz or more off the CQing station. Maybe it was just the heat of the competition, but I thought most CW operators would be better able to tune to zero beat. It would be interesting to know what rigs the other operators were using. I wonder if many of those who were tuned to zero beat were Elecrafters. 73, Larry Wolfgang, WR1B _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
