Morse Runner Progress

Over the past 6 weeks or so, I've been trying to find 30 minutes here and there to spend with Morse Runner. It's a real blast. I've been trying to do each 30 minute run with the same parameters (all the "nasty buttons" - QRN, QRM, QSB, Flutter, and Lids - turned on, 35 WPM speed, and an activity level of 3). My rate (I throw out all the busted QSOs) seems to be improving slightly:



What's most interesting is learning to recognize when I'm about to bust a QSO, and to ask for fills. Previously, I'd just guess, and about 4% of the time I'd blow it. My error rate is a bit lower now, but it's still bigger than I'd like it to be.

I also just cannot deal with pileups when everyone zero beats me. The best technique I've found is to not send a ?, which just makes everyone send on top of each other again, but to wait until someone sends their call again, or to maybe pick out the last few characters of a call sign and call that station.

I also have a hard time with calls in the form prefix/callsign. I've been inactive on HF long enough that I can't deal with anything other than callsign/prefix. I just need to learn it, I guess.