Depending on your station’s capabilities and your experience as a contest operator, you may find yourself employing one or both of two basic strategies. Listen to others throughout the weekend and you will find yourself hearing most of the same types of operating practices.
Question:
Last question — I read your post regarding the use of phonetic callsigns . . . do most VHF’ers use those or not? Again, I’ll prep my son as needed either way.
When you start a contest make sure you know when it really begins and have an accurate clock handy.
These days there is little excuse to not know what time it is to the second… at least inside your ham shack.
Since this is a leap year day, let’s celebrate by making sure we don’t forget when Daylight Time begins. Remember last year they changed the dates…
From: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/daylight_time.php
During last year’s Virginia QSO Party I heard a few too many folks on the HF bands saying their exchange with plain letters. Hmmm wasn’t this the year many no-code technicians became no-code generals? Fresh meat on the HF bands. Most of you new generals did just fine. All the ones I know certainly did fine. However, for the few who insisted on using plain letters, your rookie, FMer, status is blatantly obvious.
The Virginia QSO Party is an excellent mix of many operating styles, habits, skill levels and license levels. For the past several years the Fauquier Amateur Radio Association has worked very hard to bring home individual and club plaques. Here is a top ten list of individual operations that did well…
Ham Help Desk Engineering