In reply to my last blog post, a reader wrote:
I guess I have lost my edge. I tried to operate the CW station at our Field Day site. When I heard the pileup of 6 or more CW signals, I could not separate them My hearing must be worse than I thought. I spent my time with the GOTA station which used the callsign of one of my latest students and socializing. I guess I prefer rag chews and traffic handling.
I replied:
Don’t be so hard on yourself. Contesting is certainly a different type of operating than traffic handling or rag chewing.
What I do when I hear multiple calls is to not copy an entire call sign, but copy as much as I can of one of them, then ask for a fill. For example, if you were trying to call me, but there were several other stations also calling, and I only heard “WP,“ I’d send “WP?” and then wait for only you to call me back with your entire call. Stations without WP in their calls are supposed to stand by.
It does take practice, though. That’s why it’s good to operate contests once in a while, even if only for a short time. For example, I worked about an hour and a half of the RAC contest this weekend, making about 35 Qs altogether. That’s not a score that’s going to win me anything, but it keeps me in practice.
This weekend, the IARU HF championships are taking place. Fire up the N1MM Logger and work it for a half hour to an hour. If you do a little each weekend, you should find yourself getting better, not only at contesting, but also CW in general.
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