The Bill Windle award

In FOC, we have this program titled above. It is to compete how many other members a member could work every month and eventually in a year. I was not interested in this award at all. Because anything like award should not be, in my view, our objectives. But it should be only a result of our activities. Secondly, we, the members in the Far East, have quite tough competitors in the Middle East like 5B or 4X land in the same category of Asia, since they are fairly nearer to the european members.

Since I retired this spring, I have become much more active working more members now. I logged in the FOC web site and tried to fill out the BW sheet by Excel. The total point was up to 240 while the unique QSOs were about 130 so far. Not very bad. I will go on tracking my log from now. Maybe a good competition with the 4X guy running ahead the top at present!

I noticed a few interesting things in this record. Firstly, it is still very tough for me to work with UK and the East Coast over the north pole. Especially, the QSO with UK is small in number. Some told me they have been fairly active on the WARC bands. They might be on when the bands are open to the US, another area with large number of members. It won't be favorable to us in Asia. The UK stations are always equipped with smaller set ups like a barefoot and a wire antenna. That may be another reason why their signals won't come through the heavy QRM in the East Europe. I hope they will be active when the bands are open to Asia. They may say the same thing. There are only few members, mostly not very active, in Japan. It is the reason why they won't be on when the window is open. I would just keep active when the bands seem to open to UK.

Whenever the bands seem to open to UK, I try to call CQ "WEST EU". But undisciplined Eastern Eu boys flocked at me. John 9V1VV who might have experiened the same thing with rather worse conditions wished he had got any other common call than 9V. But the situation is the same as withe the most common JA call. i am inclined just to look for G members but not to call CQ. I hope they would try to call CQ ASIA on behalf of us from time to time.

There seems two kinds of members who have been active all the time. One group seems to be concerned about mainly this award but not ragchewing etc. They show up once a month but make only QSO in a rubber stamp style. The other group enjoys each QSO so much. They won't end it only with reports and weather info etc only. Needless to say which one I always enjoy with. Of course, it depends on the conditions etc. But I would enjoy conversation on CW even if I am conscious of this award in every QSO.

Finally, any awards are secondary to me. I would welcome any QSOs leading us to pleasant conversations.