That matches my experience in contests almost exactly.
73,
Lloyd Rasmussen, W3IUU, Kensington, MD
http://lras.home.sprynet.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Duke, K5XU
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 10:43 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: CW Speed for Special Event Stations
Lou,
You touched on the subject that is often highly debated in
CW circles, especially when it comes to contests.
The dilemma is this:
Of course, the higher your speed, the more contacts you can
make within a given amount of time. But that only holds true
if you can find enough other stations who can match your
speed.
For most of my operating this past week, I used my now 22
year-old MFJ CW keyboard. Most of the time, I had it set at
either 25 or 22 WPM.
If I hit a string of stations, maybe 6 or 7, who were
sending faster than me, I would speed up to 30 WPM, and
maybe once or twice to 35. (I'm not much good above that.)
Every time I did that, my qso rate fell off because I was
sending beyond the copy speed of the average station. When I
dropped back to 25, the qso rate would increase.
I noticed little difference between the qso rate at 22 and
25 WPM, but above 25, it became obvious very quickly.
I think what was probably happening was that a lot of people
who are on average pretty good CW operators, but who are not
big contest operators were trying to work us on CW. So,
whenever I started to out run them, they either waited for
me to slow down, or simply went away.
A few times, when not much was happening at any speed, I
slowed to 15 WPM. While I didn't make a lot of contacts at
that speed, I found that more people were matching my
sending speed, and fewer were sending faster than me.
One other deduction from all that is that if you send fast
enough, sooner or later somebody will, as it were, challenge
you to a race.
Overall, I heard a lot of very good CW, and encountered more
good operators than bad ones.
Mike Duke, K5XU
American Council of Blind Radio Amateurs
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