I’ve caught the ARRL Centennial QSO Party bug, and for the last week or so, I’ve even gotten on and started calling “CQ CENT.” As an assistant section manager (ASM), I’m worth 35 points, so I’ve even generated a couple of pileups.
As of this minute, my score is not quite 8,400 points, including the 135 QSOs I made today, including one with N3KN, Kay Craigie, the ARRL president who’s worth 300 points. I should easily reach 10,000 points by next Wednesday and have an outside shot at 15,000 points, I think.
In no particular order, here are some thoughts on the ARRL Centennial QSO Party:
- I’m a little bit miffed because I didn’t pay attention to which states I didn’t work in the W1AW/p part of the Centennial QSO Party. As a result, it looks like I’m going to be three states short.
- I have been able to work a lot of stations whose callsigns spell words. So, at the very least, I’ll be able to add to my collection of QSL cards from stations whose callsigns spell words, including some words that I don’t already have. For example, I’ve worked K5MUG a couple of times already.
- It’s amazing to me how many points some of the leaders have. As of 0000Z, 12/27/14, K1RO has more than 256,000 points. That’s a lot of operating.
- Spotting, whether you spot yourself or get someone to spot you, is very important. You can really tell when you’ve been spotted because the activity really picks up. It probably helps to spot yourself, or get spotted, on several different spotting servers.
- Headphones really are essential if you want to run a frequency. As the station calling CQ, I feel an obligation to try to pull out of the noise every station that I can, including the really weak ones. You can’t do that without headphones.
- There seems to be a pattern in the amount of activity over time. When you first get on and get spotted, there’s a rush of activity. This can last up to a half hour. Then, activity drops off quite noticeably. I’ve mentioned this to a couple of other guys who have been operating and they report a similar thing. If you persist, you can sometimes generate a second or third burst of activity, especially if you spot yourself again, or get someone to spot you.
- Being able to “copy behind” really helps. What I mean is that it helps to be able to copy an entire call, even though you’re not typing it out quite so fast. This takes practice.
- Some operators have no patience. If they’re part of the pileup, and I don’t call them on them by their second or third call, they’re gone. I’ve noticed this many times. If only they’d stuck with it for a while longer, I would have gotten around to them.
- I feel bad when there’s a station in there that does stick with it, but a stronger station comes on and swamps them before I can copy a complete call. Usually, I’ll ignore the stronger station and try to work the weaker station, if they’ve called several times, but sometimes, it’s just not possible to do that.
- You can tell that some of the operators who are working this QSO party are not contesters or DXers. Sometimes, when I get only a partial call, I’ll send the part that I copied and append a question mark. A lot of times, those stations don’t understand that I want them to send me their complete call. Sometimes they just disappear, which is too bad.
On Twitter today, John, C6ATS/KK4OYJ tweeted, “Wondering…. What will US hams do when all the Centennial stuff goes away?” I think that’s a really good question. Someone replied, “…complain that the award takes too long to arrive.” My answer was, “Maybe we’ll all actually start talking to one another.” Answer #1 is more probable, but I can hope, can’t I?
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