Every weekend, amateur radio contests are held on some band or another. Many people literally take part in contests, working hard without sleep to get high scores by communicating with many stations. On the other hand, some people try to catch rare stations or secretly use the opportunity to conduct experiments, since they can expect to communicate with many more stations than usual.
I also made a Morse vibration converter, so I need to evaluate whether it can be used in practice.
One of the most suitable contest has come up this weekend. It is the KCJ Contest, organized by the National CW Club (KCJ), of which I am a member. It is one of the largest contests in Japan where the participation category is only for telegraph (CW).
The feature of this contest is that “a report card” is issued to all participants. In other words, the number of mistakes, such as receiving the wrong call sign, is counted, and the results are published along with the rankings. These are quantifications of problems related to the content of communication, and since there is someone on the other end of the line, a high number does not always mean that the person’s telegraphy skills are inferior. But the fewer the numbers the better.
And although I don’t know how many points I’ll earn, if my “report card” isn’t much different from others who are ranked nearby in the result, I can say “this Morse vibration converter can be used for vibration reception with an intelligibility that is not much different from listening with the ear.” To do that, I first need to block aural reception of my own. And at least while I’m sitting in front of the radio, I would like to try to operate it completely without relying on hearing or seeing.
So that’s how I enter the contest! According to the rule of this contest, if you fail to receive the callsign or contest numbers from other party, they won’t get any points either.
This puts a bit of pressure on me….