Hello Marty.. Since in a contest you are copying mostly callsigns
and exchanges, the skill of putting a callsign in the log can be
practiced with the German program called RUFZ. K5FO mentioned it
a few months ago, and since then I've been using it and have given it
to all the guys that I go on Field Day with. We use my laptop for
logging (with CT program), and I use the PC for most of the other
contests that I operate during the year.
Even if you don't use a PC for logging, RUFZ is great practice for
copying calls off the air. Each call is sent to you at a different
audio pitch, and if you get one correct it increases the speed of the
next call. Eventually it varies up and down around the speed that you
can copy correctly at, but is constantly pushing you to copy faster.
With each call coming at a different pitch, it's kind of like being
the object of a pileup on the air.
The nice thing is that it is sending real callsigns from a file
included with the program. Since it's a German program, most of the
calls are European, so I've changed my file to be a list of all the
U.S. calls we've worked on the last couple of Field Days and QRP
contests. The score from all U.S. calls can't be directly compared
with the scores of people around the world that are using the original
callsign file, but it's good practice for real calls that will
probably be heard in contests in the U.S. with the lousy band
conditions we have for now.
Here's one of the places where you can get RUFZ:
ftp://kgiprn.geo.tu-dresden.de/pub/hamradio/rufz
Good luck! -- Glenn
------------------------------
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool!" Red Green
AE0Q / V31RY ex: GM5BKC, ZB2WZ, SV0WY, WA0VPK
v31ry@ix.netcom.com --SOWP 5558M, QCWA LM, ARRL LM, NCVA--
[
QRP-L Archive |
]
[
1993 |
1994 |
1995 |
1996 |
1997 |
1998 |
1999 |
2000
]