I participated in the FISTS Winter Sprint yesterday, which ran from 1700Z to 2100Z. While I have taken part in other contests, I’ve never done it seriously. During last year’s Field Day, I worked a little CW for our club, and during the 2002 CW Sweepstakes I got on and handed out a few QSOs, but in neither case did I submit logs.
So, this was my first contest as a serious competitor.
1700Z is noon here, so I got on a little earlier to make a few QSOs and warm up. The last of these contacts ended about 1650Z, and I tuned up to 14058 to wait patiently. The anticipation was actually kind of exciting. Time seemed to slow down as I watch the clock: 1652, 1653, 1656, 1658, 1700!
As soon as the first station started calling CQ FISTS, all the others jumped in. My first contact was with K5TPC on 14057. I then camped out a little on 14057.5 and had some success there, working four or five stations in very short order.
Then, the activity slowed down a little and I decided to go searching for other stations calling CQ. I think, in retrospect, that that was a mistake. I should have perhaps tried to keep my position on 14057.5, calling CQ, but I think that I’d have eventually been forced off the frequency by the higher power stations.
I spent the entire first hour, scanning between 14057 and 14060, totalling about 15 contacts. Then I went through a real dry spell. Tuning around a little, I found that the contest had spread down as low as 14050, so I set up down there and began calling CQ. I had some success, but the bulk of the stations were still up around 14058.
For the next three hours, I split my time between 14057 – 14060 and 14050-14055. When one went quiet, I’d tune over to the other. For a while, I tried calling CQ FISTs down around 14051, but didn’t have all that much success.
The third hour was the worst. I think I only made six or seven contacts from 1900Z to 2000Z. I was thinking about calling it quits, but then I figured that since I’d stuck it out this long, I might as well finish.
I’m glad I did. Activity seemed to pick up the last hour, and I not only picked up more contacts, but more multipliers as well. In the last 15 minutes alone, I made six contacts, including three multipliers (WI, TN, and LA).
All in all, I think I did pretty well for my first “real” contest. I had a total of 43 contacts, yielding 212 QSO points (one of the contacts was not a FISTS member). With the 25 multipliers, my score was 5,300. 20m was pretty much open all over, except to the west coast, which accounts for the high number of multipliers.
For most of the contest, I had the keyer cranked up to 20 wpm. That seemed to work just fine for most contacts. A couple of times, I had to slow down, but since the format was pretty cut and dry, most all the ops could go at least 20 wpm.
I also made use of the memory function of the keyer, programming in “CQ FISTS DE KB6NU.” It did save a little wear and tear, but working a paddle really isn’t all that much work. I probably should have also programmed in “UR 599 MI DAN 9342,” which is the standard QSO, but it wasn’t so bad sending that.
To sum up, I learned something about contesting, and even more importantly, had a lot of fun. I’m definitely going to seek out more contests, so that by the time the 2003 Field Day rolls around I’ll have that much more experience to bring to the party.
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