KQ4QWH: QSO King

Steve Maley, KQ4QWH, is the undisputed SUPERSTATION Big Gun and QSO King!

Steve’s scores in the SUPERSTATION contest are almost beyond belief, often scoring double the second-place station. He has magnanimously asked that he not be considered for future awards so that others have an opportunity. Steve will still be participating in SUPERSTATION contests as he sees fit, and his score will be reported so that all may bend the knee to the King.

What are Steve's secrets?

1) Your station (and, in particular, your antennas). VarAC does not require a tremendous amount of transmitter power, but a poor antenna system seriously affects the contacts you make. But work what you have calling CQ. And if you see a station call CQ, try to contact them.  Don't ignore a station because of their SNR. We work what we have and I have had great QSOs with QRP stations at long distances 

2) Make friends. Add your friends to your Alerts. When your friends beacon, you can see if they have time to chat.

3) Be in your shack AND on the right band when people are actually around and have time to chat! In the U.S., stations begin moving from 20M to 40M about 5:00PM east coast time during the week. If you're on 20M and everyone else is on 40M, you're missing out!

4) Use PSKReporter to see if anyone is hearing you. Also look at the other band's station counts and if you see stations on 10-30m, give those bands a try. Use VOACAP to see if a band is not working where you want to work, if not, go to another band! Also see #1.

5) Part of making friends is having something interesting to say. And having something interesting to say is by listening to what they say, or have on QRZ, and talk about their interests.  If all you want to chat about is your rig and the weather, people might not be real interested in chatting with you!

6) Fill out your QRZ.com page. Other stations are going to your page to see what you might want to chat about.

7) Be retired. OK. Being retired really helps in making contacts.

8) Live on the East coast of the United States. Yeah, that helps too, particularly in making contacts to Europe. But no matter where you live, work the bands and the grey line.

Finally, call CQ from time to time and see if you can make new friends. Calling CQ is like fishing, if you don’t throw out a line, you won’t catch anything.

73

Stephen Maley

KQ4QWH

Coats, NC