WAE Rookie

I never entered the WAE (Worked All Europe) contest until this past weekend. I could claim that the unusual QTC rule is the reason but that's really not it; only some laziness on my part to learn how it works. The bigger reason is that it takes place in the summer when I mostly avoid HF and contests.

I decided to give  WAE CW a try this year. I did it part time with low power since I didn't want to attract many callers while I learned how to do QTC. I studied the N1MM+ documentation before the contest, noted the key features needed to bring up the QTC window and send them and started calling stations. I assume there are similar features for DXLog and other popular contest loggers.

I did S & P for most of my time in the contest so that I could control the pace. My only CQing -- I hesitate to call it running, as we'll come to later -- was Sunday afternoon. In retrospect, this is an unusual contest that may be an acquired taste. I remain undecided, as you'll see.

Many contesters love WAE and may be offended by what follows. Please keep in mind that I am writing this in good humour and poking a little fun at a contest with peculiar rules that lead to peculiar behaviours.

Multipliers

Multipliers came up while briefly reviewing the rules before the contest. They seemed a little odd. I decided not to worry about the details since my score was not a concern. As I worked stations the multipliers accumulated and that was good enough.

As time went on there was a puzzle: the multipliers were growing at an alarming rate. I worried that there was a scoring bug in N1MM. Apparently not. It is actually possible to have more multipliers than QSOs in this contest. Had I only known I'd have looked for more. I ended up with 297 multipliers from 311 contacts.

With effort you could do the same in CQ WW if you restrict yourself to working only one station in each zone -- that's up to 2 multipliers per QSO. But that would cut your effective operating time, and score, since there are only 40 zones. The sky's the limit in WAE.

Endless clicking

When doing S & P while assisted it is routine to click on human or RBN spots to find stations to work. On CW the skimmer network is so good that few contest operators bother to spot stations. There is almost no need to touch the VFO.

Well, that's simple, right? Not in WAE. Far too often I found that when I clicked on a spot I would find two stations in the midst of a long exchange of QTC. Not knowing how long that would take, and it can be quite some time, I would click on another spot. Time is of the essence in a contest.

But the next station is doing the same! With some dismay I click again. And again and again. Finally I find a station either finishing a QSO or a bunch of QTC and my finger hovers over the Enter key. Then they don't sign. I patiently wait for the next caller to make their contact, hoping to hear a call sign. Then they close with "QTC?" and off I go again looking for a station to work. 

I don't think I've ever had so low an S & P rate as in WAE. Not even years ago when I operated QRP.

Polite or rude?

When I don't have QTC or too few to go to the trouble of sending them, what should I say? There are endless ways to say no: "sri", "nil", "no qtc", "later", etc. I heard them all during WAE. It matters since I had to deal with the situation quite a lot.

Not having anticipated the frequent need I did not program a function key to politely decline. I did it manually by paddle but found that at over 35 wpm lengthy and dit-laden messages could be tricky to send. Eventually I settled on a simple "no". It's not particularly polite but it is short and effective. 

That worked for me and it certainly didn't deter the eternally hopeful from returning later to ask again. Some would do it 2 or 3 times. They might have come by even more had I operated longer.

The one respite was 80 meters. Nobody asked me for QTC on 80. Let's see...summer QRN, 100 watts...hmm. Maybe that's not so surprising. I think the European strategy is to hunt for QTC on the higher bands where copy is better. That's sensible. Maybe if I want to avoid QTC requests in the future I should do a single band 80 meter entry. There are no single band categories in WAE but I don't see why that should stop me.

Sending QTC

Sending QTC is absurdly easy with N1MM+. I could read a book while doing it and still respond to requests for repeats. Other than keyboard shortcuts to open the QTC window and send the header, you just press enter after each QTC is acknowledged, or press another key to repeat part or all of the QTC. All of the real work is done by the European operator.

It's boring, but points are points. I look at the points as compensation for the sheer tedium and annoyance. This might seem to be an opportunity for SO2R ops to make use of the dead time, but you really can't since the gaps between QTC are too short to fit in a transmission on the other radio. Copy an "R" and on to the next. Many operators do SO2R in WAE so it is certainly possible, but I wonder if that is only because the rate is not so high as in other contests.

QTC are not simple message. They consist of a UTC time, call sign and serial number. There are ample opportunities for copying errors and requests for repeats. Yet it rarely occurred. The European operators are good at the WAE game. Only once out of about 40 QTC series was I asked to QRS, and I was typically sending at 35 wpm. There was one instance of many repeat requests during a QTC series, which was on a noisy and interference plagued 40 meters. I don't recall who it was but he worked hard for those QTC. Bravo!

Who gets my QTC?

Since my supply of QTC is limited and the demand is almost unlimited, I have to deal with economics of a scarce resource, a resource that I control. DX stations have this peculiar superpower in WAE. Who gets my QTC? Do certain stations deserve them more than others? How do I decide? They may care but no matter who I give them to the impact on my score is the same. The potential dynamic is interesting.

It isn't as simple as bestowing them on my friends. Each can only get 10. What do I do with the rest? If I refuse to give QTC to anyone else my score will suffer. To get the most out of my contest effort I'll eventually have to give them to anyone who asks.

The alternative is more devious. I can give them to all except stations I want to hurt. That is, I withhold those 10 QTC from certain stations. I can still send my full load of QTC while (marginally) hurting selected stations.

Is that fair? No, of course not, but it breaks no rules. With the recent controversies in WRTC about cheerleading and pirate multipliers it's a good thing that there are no QTC in that competition. The situation is ugly enough already.

I want to run!

It was all S & P until Sunday afternoon when I decided to try some running. It didn't go well. I would attract a few casual European participants and then the QTC requests arrived from those I'd worked before. It seemed that as soon as the small pile up heard the first letter of "QTC?" they all scattered to the winds. Like me they had no intention of sticking around for a lengthy QTC exchange. 

I knew they'd gone when I declined the QTC request and no one was there to call me again. I would resume CQing in an attempt to run stations but then another previously worked station would jump in to ask for QTC. It was inescapable; running was next to impossible. Imagine how much worse it would have been had I been running high power.

It was both amusing and aggravating. Again, points are points, but sending (or refusing) QTC makes running very difficult and sending QTC is boring. I didn't like it so I stopped trying to run.

Activity

Let's be blunt, it wasn't great. Having heard so much about the contest and its importance to European contesters I expected more. I was surprised how quickly I ran out of stations to call. Running elicited calls from smaller and more casual participants, however as already noted, all my runs were rapidly interrupted by QTC seekers. 

Was this simply a bad year because qualifications for the next WRTC are slated for the future? Perhaps that had an impact on a few but not the bulk of European operators. Maybe the problem is us, the non-Europeans. If we were more active in WAE maybe that would encourage more European activity. I can't speak to the activity level in Asia and elsewhere since I usually couldn't hear them at the same we had our openings to Europe. 

Going by the reported scores on 3830, we worked far more Europeans than vice versa. The QSOs on their side were especially low considering the contest duration. However the QTC achievements of the serious European competitors were very high, far higher than their QSOs.

When the roles are reversed in ARRL DX contests there is certainly more activity on both sides of the Atlantic. Is it because of the season? QTC? Something else? I don't know. Of course neither holds a candle to the activity in CQ WW and WPX.

QTC? What's a QTC?

Quite a few Europeans are happy to work DX in WAE while having no interest whatsoever in QTC. They are in it for the enjoyment, not the score. They never ask for QTC and they never accept if you offer. I can sympathize.

I wonder how many of them there are? Presumably there are some outside Europe that are too casual to post to 3830 and may not even bother to send in their logs. However it must be said that sending QTC is pretty easy with a modern contest logger, so why not do it if asked. It's easier for a European operator to avoid QTC since if they don't ask it is rare that someone will offer to send them some.

So it's possible to enter WAE and avoid QTC. But be prepared to say no a lot if you're outside of Europe.

Next year

After this year's brief experiment I just don't know. It didn't seem too exciting, just different. All I can say is that I like to go to others' parties when I'm invited since they so readily come to ours. Putting a few contacts (and QTC) in their logs is a neighbourly way to return the favour.