As I wrote in my report about the Ham Radio in Friedrichshafen I attended the Contest University on friday afternoon.

The afternoon started with a welcome by the organiser Michael DL6MHW and then a discussion of contest ethics. After this the group was split in 2, the beginners in one room, the more advanced contesters in an other.
The beginners got the following parts: Contest basics, contest logging, how to get a decent score with a small station, clubcompetition and motivation.

I attended the part for advanced contesters with these parts:

• Better logging / log analysis
  These things were discussed: preparation of the contest, on what frequency should I be, what software to use, what is a contest qso, log analysis and UBN
• Using skimmer and RBN
  For me as a mainly rtty and ssb contester this was something I had never really paid attention to. I wonder when the RBN system will be available for RTTY and PSK.
• VHF contesting tactics and tips
  Using a video from a big gun station in a major contest different situations were discussed and criticised
• Contest radios
  This was a presentation by Eric ‘Elecraft’ WA6HHQ who mainly presented the differences and properties of the different high end contest radios. And, of course, his K3 is the best in the world. Of course the rig he sells is good but maybe his views are a little biased? The K3 looks tempting to me but I still have my doubts whether I should purchase it from QRP-projects in Germany or direct from Elecraft.
• advanced rtty contesting
  here the discussion went especially about the way macros should be used and how the software and filters (transceiver and software) should be configured.

The end of the afternoon the two groups together got a presentation of the V31YN contest crew and their station and tactics.

This was a very well organised afternoon although most of the attendants thought maybe there should have been a little more time for each speaker to get even deeper into his subject. Congrats to DL6MHW and his crew!!!

I am not really proficient in the Gernan language but I got about 90% of what was said and the rest I got from the really excellent documentation provided!

Will it make me win more contests? Maybe not (the QSOs still have to be made) but at least it gave me a few more insights in the contest secrets and it was good for improving my understanding of the German language 🙂 (Learning a language is like learning CW: Practice, practice, practice!)
It was €20 well spent! Moreover for that price I got a T-shirt, the new Bavarian Contest Club ‘Handbuch für den Contester’, the CQ-DL contest special, a bottle of water and some gadgets.