I’m afraid it has to be said, but CW, is not always the best mode.
On Saturday morning, I managed 11 VK’s, 5 of them s2s, using a CB antenna, tuner and mic.
It would be interesting to see what percentage of VK/G contacts have been made using CW. I’ll wager, it’s not that high.
BTW, the path to VK was pretty much dead until 0730z.
73 Mike
2E0YYY
Wouldn’t be surprised to find it reflects the proportion of SOTA activators in VK who are using CW (which is, I think, small at present, but rising).
73, Rick M0LEP
Having never used cw, I don’t see how you could make such a statement Mike. I do agree with Rick’s assessment.
Pity I couldn’t get through on Saturday for the S2S, but at least you go into my SWL log as a consolation.
I find the discussion about which mode is ‘best’ extremely boring and not very productive. People just get on with their preferences in terms of mode, bands, power levels, equipment etc. etc. which I guess is why only the usual suspects turn up for this sort of ‘discussion’…oh well.
Night night
Mike
PS:Andrew VK1NAM - I heard fragments of your voice on 20M,bands were not in my favour. Always another day 8)
There is no outright winner in radio or anything to do with RF, its just having certain probabilities in your favor at the time.
I got a 4,1 from Andrew using 10w. I just find it astonishing how something that generates 20dB more then the signal generator in the lab can go this far around the planet.
To argue that CW is “inefficient” for DX is a nonsense, it is far superior in this respect, Who was actually active on CW has a much greater bias on the success on Saturday rather then power, antennas or any other minor, seemingly “big” difference it may make.
It’s all irrelevant anyway as all the VK SOTA activity was on SSB. As such, CW would not have been effective at all.
Well, I firmly believe that we are all entitled to use the band and mode of our choice, Mike, you and I prefer SSB, others prefer CW - you should sympathise with that, its free expression!
Brian
And others, like me, enjoy both, CW and phone.
I have been mainly a CW operator over decades.
For a contest I definitely prefer CW. My voice is not strong enough to be shouting or even talking for so long and I’m not as cruel as to punish my family with thousands of repetitions, over and over.
At home with the family moving around, I prefer and almost exclusively choose CW.
For SOTA activations, if there’s no people around in the summit, I have used phone from time to time and I do enjoy it a lot, different but as much as CW.
Best 73 de Guru - EA2IF