I was tuning 40 CW this evening, about 7 PM mountain time, when I heard the
P Y 0F expedition. Since 7 PM local is still a little early for a wire
antenna, he wasn't all that loud. In fact, at first, he was bearly above my
noise level of S4 on 40 meters. What caught my attention was his speed. He
was sending at least 50, perhaps 55, maybe even 60 WPM when I found him. He
would work several stations at that speed, repeating calls two, three, and
sometimes 4 times, or just parts of calls over and over again, since
obviously few were copying him at that high speed, but he'd slow down to
about 25 when he gave the complete call sign about once every 10 minutes. I
already knew who it was from copying the W1AW DX bulletin earlier today and
17 meters. I've only heard one or two contest operators trying to go that
fast but when tuning across them later, they often were 30 WPM, if not less,
trying to get those who couldn't copy their high speed CW. Of course, it
wasn't his high speed CW but the software. I thought his performance was
rediculous, especially for an expedition, and band conditions but that seems
to be the normal almost these days and I'm not for sure why. I worked
several P Y 0F stations over the years so I didn't need this one but he sure
was giving guys a work out at that rediculously high speed. Fortunately,
many people can copy their own call sign at probably double their rag chew
speed but this was over the top, in my opinion, but then what do I know. I
was thinking about how many countries I had and what expeditions I missed
over the passed almost 49 years and I could only think of perhaps a total of
three I missed. That was normally due to me not being on the band, or on
the air, when they were, and once or twice might have been due to just a
weak signal. I didn't use clusters and DX alerts and e-spotters but once
and awhile, a friend would call on the phone or announce a station on our
semplex 2 meter FM frequency for the Mile High DX Club of which I was a
member for one year until I realized it was a social club and not a ham
club. A guy called me once, not a ham, and told me I was too cynical. I
guess he was right. On the other hand, I well remember a friend of mine
after field day tell me that they used about 25 WPM for the CW speed but
after half the FD contest, realized they were missing calls and no one
answered their CQ FD as much. So they dropped down to no more than 13 WPM
and even down to 10 WPM, he said, and they worked tons more before it was
over. I realize in a DX contest we are trying to work a boat load of
stations to ring up the points but I get a big kick out of guys running 40
to 50 WPM and then when someone calls them, they answered on a bug or hand
key or keyer at 15 or 20 words per minute; usually missing a dit or daw here
and there.
Phil.
K0NX
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