NCCC NS Ladder

Hav­ing been a big fan of the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Con­test Club’s Sprint series of con­tests (four and twelve hour domes­tic con­tests, 100 watts tops, great oper­a­tors), I became inter­ested in my con­test club par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Lad­der series. The NS Lad­der is a weekly 1/​2 hour CW sprint of great fun and intense difficulty.

The deal: You exchange ser­ial num­ber, name and state with as many peo­ple on CW as pos­si­ble for a full half hour. Dupes are allowed as long as you log an inter­ven­ing QSO. If you ini­ti­ate a con­tact via CQ, you are required to aban­don the fre­quency – QSY 1 KC before you can call again. Those answer­ing CQs typ­i­cally will inherit the CQers fre­quency. Madhouse!

The typ­i­cal strat­egy of lag­ging on fre­quency after you answer a CQ – typ­i­cal CW sweep­stakes strat­egy to val­i­date you copy every­thing cor­rectly (a bad con­test­ing habit) – just doesn’t work here! The point to this con­test is not just speed but also accu­racy! You need to get the exchange cor­rect on the first try, or not be afraid of ask­ing for fills. N1MM log­ger (or sim­i­lar) help if you have pre­vi­ous con­tests logged in the call data­base, but often the par­tic­i­pants will adopt another name on a whim or as trib­ute to a SK. Thus, get it right the first time.

My first run at the Lad­der sprint two weeks ago was totally intim­i­dat­ing. Due to the CW rates and intense activ­ity I froze. It was if I for­got CW! And I thought myself a pretty decent CW operator…totally hum­bling. My sec­ond attempt last Thurs­day night was much bet­ter in com­par­i­son to the pre­vi­ous week, though still rank­ing at the bot­tom of the list. Caveat, I am not able to change bands cur­rently because my tuner ser­ial port is dead. I am stuck on 40M until I get around to fixing/​replacing my tuner. I would imag­ine my score would have dou­bled if given the chance to QSY between 40 and 80. My ini­tial rate was a a cou­ple QSO per minute, but dropped off as oth­ers changed bands. I aver­aged a lit­tle under 1 QSO per minute over the dura­tion, and logged 11 dif­fer­ent mults (states, in this case). Pure con­jec­ture on my part, but if I were to achieve sim­i­lar QSO num­bers and mults on 80, I might have a score in the upper 50 per­centile of the participants.

The obvi­ous key to my increased per­for­mance this ses­sion was due to get­ting my N1MM macros setup bet­ter, along with play­ing in the “slow” prac­tice “net” one half hour prior to the start of the con­test. Also, know­ing was was com­ing was impor­tant to help­ing me relax…normal learn­ing curve stuff. I also learned to trust my ini­tial copy bet­ter. I had only one busted name and call this time…yes, the rates dur­ing the lad­der sprints are quite high…post-sprint foren­sics indi­cate that even if I think I copied it wrong, chances are I got it cor­rectly the first time. Where needed, the fills and allow­able dupli­cate con­tacts helped me self-​correct dur­ing the con­test period.

In answer­ing the ques­tion “How does one become a bet­ter con­tester”, I think MY answer is to con­tinue par­tic­i­pat­ing in the NS Lad­der. It is a con­test of skill pri­mar­ily, and sta­tion engi­neer­ing sec­ond. A great equal­izer is the 100W power limit. In just two 1/​2 hour peri­ods I have gen­er­ated quite a punch list of improve­ments to my sta­tion and oper­at­ing. Top on my list:

1. Code prac­tice! Noth­ing fancy, just code groups in increas­ing WPM. I have a 35 WPM endorse­ment from the ARRL, but I haven’t oper­ated that fast in decades. I am pretty solid to 20WPM, but start loos­ing it any higher. By the way, just because an op may have trou­ble at rag-​chewing to 15WPM doesn’t mean you will have trou­ble in CW con­tests at much higher rates – the exchanges are pre­dictable and of lim­ited dura­tion. I have found I start at lower speeds and by the end of the con­test have increased 15WPM over my start!

2. Quick QSY between ⁴⁰⁄₈₀. I will be able to fix this once I replace my tuner. I am also con­sid­er­ing a bet­ter con­structed dou­blet as my cur­rent ghetto-​fabulous G5RV is a dis­as­ter and relies mostly upon luck to hold together.

3. Con­test log­ger macro tweak­ing. I am still try­ing to under­stand the darker cor­ners of N1MM macros. The few tweaks I have done help. The bet­ter I under­stand the tool, the bet­ter I am able log. By the way, I have a K1EL keyer that works fan­tas­ti­cally with N1MM – highly rec­om­mended over any other solution.

4. CAT Fre­quency con­trol. I have not been able to CAT con­trol my rig since the last time I acci­dently let the blue smoke out of my sta­tion. Hav­ing the abil­ity to hit a key on my log­ger to auto-​QSY would have been very useful.

Ulti­mately increas­ing the qual­ity of RX, and hav­ing So2R would be very strate­gic. That said, just address­ing the items above will net me increase in QSO rate and mul­ti­plier. Also, every­one I have met thus far have been very encour­ag­ing and happy to share their expe­ri­ence. The NS Lad­der has some of the best domes­tic oper­a­tors so I am pleased to be able to learn from the Masters.