What preparation do you do?
John Ferrington (vk6hz)
on
October 5, 2009
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I was just in the kitchen preparing the family evening meal and was thinking
about contesting and what effort do others put into a contest.
So a bunch of questions as I am curious to find out about others
preparation…
1. Does
anyone do detailed analysis of their previous years log? Do you look at others? I have spent many hours
doing detailed analysis several logs form last years CQWW SSB and looking at the total logs submitted,
gathering information like i.)how many logs were submitted, ii.) from what continents, iii.) what zones,
iv.) who worked VK, at what times etc….Do you do any analysis of the DX Clusters for the weeks before
a contest? How much do you operate the weeks before a contest?
2. Voice
keyers…does anyone in the group use a DVK? How useful is (apart from not losing your voice!)? Do you
feel it has increased or decreased your rate? I'm sure this one topic will polarize the group, but I trialed
it during the OC contest last weekend and thought it was a good idea on 15 or 20 for CQing in those
very slow hours!
3. Travel - I know there are some hardcore contesters amongst us, some have travelled
to exotic locations on a regular basis and have done well. Others have travelled locally and done just as
well. How do you guys prepare for a contest? Do you take 2 of everything? Is there anything unusal you
take with you?
4. DO
you budget each year how much you will spend on contesting/radio, or is it all ad-hoc spending?
5. DX
Clusters - do you operated assisted? Do you spot any S&P q's or do you think that will give another VK
some advantage over you? Is it an essential tool or a hindrance in contesting? I read an interesting
article by Martin, VK7GN on the Handling the Packet-pileup (http://www.mapability.com/ei8ic/c
ontest/ppileup.php). I'm sure this applies to SSB as well.
6. Meals/food - do you stop for meals or do you eat on the fly? What do you eat? Do
you have a few beers at 5pm on Saturday afternoon while contesting?
7. Sleep
- Yes…sleep….It important for your body to function properly, but
when do you sleep during a
contest? In the case of a 48hr contest, do you take your break on day
1 or day 2? Do you sleep with the radio on?
8. Rates
- do you do a rate sheet or some kind of strategy before a contest? Do you beat yourself up if you don't
make your hourly rate, or do you just play it by ear? Do you set a goal for each contest? Do you get
disappointed when you don't achieve the goal? On the other hand, are you ecstatic when you meet,
break or exceed your goal? Do you celebrate the achievement during the contest, or do you wait until
its over?
Its time to go and pick up the family and cook them dinner (Honey-soy
chicken stir fry for anyone who's interested!) Yes, loads of stuff to think about but I am interested in
finding out peoples views and experiences. But I'm sure that you will have your little “secrets” that you
wont want to share…
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What preparation do you do?
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by K8DO on October 12, 2009
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Well, the first thing after the summer lull from operating - boating time - is to fire up the low band gear and see what needs repairing... The past 3 weekends have been spent restringing beverages, replacing a 1000 foot run of RG6 that those little deer feet had sliced somewhere deep in the run through the briars and the brambles... Next is to get on 160 evenings and mornings and see what is shaking out in the world...
The couple of other things I managed to find was one amp that suddenly (in mid DIT) blew the main fuse - big time (sigh)... I'm still looking for a tube...
The other was one of the remote tuners for the 160 array suddeny began arcing causing the SWR meter to go nuts... A trudge out into the woods in the pitch black of a rainy night revealed the strong odor of burned micarta inside the tuner box - so that tuner is now on the bench, with the charred micarta ground away and ready to be returned to service... It appears that an itsy bitsy spider went up the coil and bridged the primary and secondary windings in mid dit - a couple of fried legs at the scene of the crime revealed the truth... The carbon from his body made a track on the surface of the insulator that quickly became a smoking crater...
Next N1MM was up versioned, then a day later up versioned again as they patched the fix they made the day before... Now it is whining that CTY is not current...
If I keep this up day after day for another month I MIGHT have everything fixed by CQWW - and probably be too tired to stay awake...
denny / k8do
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by K8DO on October 12, 2009
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OK, I finally actually read the OP...
1. I never look... It's history (boring)... What will be will be...
2. I do use a voice keyer (MFJ) for the one phone contest I run every year... (gawd I hate phone contests - the second most boring thing in this world after history)
3. I work 12 hours a day 6 days a week just to get enough money to keep my rapidly self destructing station from collapsing into a heap of dust... No time for DX on a sarong beach in Tahiti...
4. No budget needed... Entropy sees to it that the station takes every durn penny I have left - after the boat, etc...
5. DX Clusters are for those congenitally destined for the Darwin Award... Jeez, turn the damned dial and LISTEN.... ( dx clusters, mumble, mutter, losers)
6. Don't drink and food puts me to sleep, so it's peanuts and tea during a contest...
7. Too old for 48 hour iron man crap... I work 160 or 80 single band and sleep during the day...
8. Rate? What the heck's a rate? I'm just happy to have someone come back to me once an hour...
So there ya have it... I kinda toned down my remarks so as not to sound opinionated - but if ya need any advice drop me an email - don't listen to those losers like K1AR, K5ZD, K8GL, etc... They don't know crapola from shinola...
denny / k8do :)
Most of my money went to boats, airplanes, and radios... The rest I squandered on food, etc...
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by KG5VK on October 31, 2009
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1. Does anyone do detailed analysis of their previous years log? Do you look at others? I have spent many hours doing detailed analysis several logs form last years CQWW SSB and looking at the total logs submitted, gathering information like i.)how many logs were submitted, ii.) from what continents, iii.) what zones, iv.) who worked VK, at what times etc….Do you do any analysis of the DX Clusters for the weeks before a contest? How much do you operate the weeks before a contest?
I use K0RC spreadsheet tools to do a thorough analysis of last year and even several years before that a couple of months before November, ARRL SS Phone is my favorite contest and I have been hosting a team of OPS at my QTH for several years now.
So I analysis rates of different ops, to look for periods of time when some are at their best over others and keep this in mind when building the OP schedule
We also look for things like did we make the move from 20m to 40m too early, or make the move to 75m too late
I then take the high Q rates and build goal charts to use both in tandem with N1MM and print charts that ops can see while not behind the mic, these charts with other analysis go in the Shack Red Book
I also use the LCR (Log Check Reports) from the ARRL
I look for why someone logged us as kg5dk versus kg5vk
and then consider listing possible better phonetics we might try during the next contest
these things get discussed with past guest ops
and our consensus on better choice of phonetics gets added to the Red Book
2. Voice keyers…does anyone in the group use a DVK? How useful is (apart from not losing your voice!)? Do you feel it has increased or decreased your rate? I'm sure this one topic will polarize the group, but I trialed it during the OC contest last weekend and thought it was a good idea on 15 or 20 for CQing in those very slow hours!
We do use DVK but not as aggressive as we have in the past, a cq machine does not elicit calls from casual ops as well as a live voice does
Instead during slow rates we utilize the second radio more iow we use SO2R in a multi-op environment
3. Travel - I know there are some hardcore contesters amongst us, some have travelled to exotic locations on a regular basis and have done well. Others have travelled locally and done just as well. How do you guys prepare for a contest? Do you take 2 of everything? Is there anything unusal you take with you?
other than Europe in 1981, I have not done any dx pedition style contest op, yet
4. DO you budget each year how much you will spend on contesting/radio, or is it all ad-hoc spending?
I budget by spending on the wife first, then we try and stay under 1K each year
most years we spend far less, others we spend several times that
Crane rental is not cheap so we try and do scheduled maintenance every five years on our higher antennas
that require a crane
5. DX Clusters - do you operated assisted? Do you spot any S&P q's or do you think that will give another VK some advantage over you? Is it an essential tool or a hindrance in contesting? I read an interesting article by Martin, VK7GN on the Handling the Packet-pileup (http://www.mapability.com/ei8ic/c ontest/ppileup.php). I'm sure this applies to SSB as well.
since my contesting is almost always Multi-OP we do use dx cluster
yes we spot what we work during S&P
6. Meals/food - do you stop for meals or do you eat on the fly? What do you eat? Do you have a few beers at 5pm on Saturday afternoon while contesting?
We never have alcohol just before or during a contest, that is for after celebration
we plan ahead and have all the favorite junk food of each guest op that comes
we have pizza at about 3 pm Sunday
it is eat while your not at the mic
so we rotate ops at a fast pace during pizza time
Saturday before the start of the contest (SS starts at 3pm local our time) we have a spagetti dinner or
big pot of gumbo for everyone
the big pot of gumbo usually last thru Sunday night, we might be in the North but we are still in Louisiana and Gumbo rules !!!!!!!
7. Sleep - Yes…sleep….It important for your body to function properly, but when do you sleep during a contest? In the case of a 48hr contest, do you take your break on day 1 or day 2? Do you sleep with the radio on?
SS is a 30 hour contest but only 24 hours on the air
so barring a Saturday night or late afternoon thunder storm we plan our sleep period from midnight to 5 am
this leaves us one hour Murphey's Law buffer (we plan on the un planned)
8. Rates - do you do a rate sheet or some kind of strategy before a contest? Do you beat yourself up if you don't make your hourly rate, or do you just play it by ear? Do you set a goal for each contest? Do you get disappointed when you don't achieve the goal? On the other hand, are you ecstatic when you meet, break or exceed your goal? Do you celebrate the achievement during the contest, or do you wait until its over?
see my answer to number one, but I will add we try and not get discouraged
if our rate is less than our goals
we must focus on the now
someone recently said on one of the reflectors that contesting is a Now experience
we work that that we can Now !
we always strive for higher rates, SS is a rate contest more than anything else
We are always extra pumped when we beat our rate goals
73 and c u in SS phone November 21, 2009
steve
KG5VK
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