Contest Strategies and Station Setups

What are some of your strategies for contesting? Do you try to schedule QSO's with other ops prior to a contest? Do you mix Hunt and pounce with calling CQ? What type of band plan do you use? Do you spend a certain amount of time on each band and mode and then move? I'm curious to know how most hams go about contesting and would love to discuss this here.
I usually look at what bands are open and mix a little hunt and pounce in with calling CQ. I only have a little pistol station and usually enter in low power categories. What works best for me is to get close to other stations but not so close that the bleed over on me. There I will sit and call CQ until I don't get any takers, that is when I start the hunt and pounce looking for multipliers and other ops I'm not got in the log yet. Once that is exhausted, I'll change bands and start the same process.

What are your preferences? How do you operate when you contest? Let's get some discussion going. What type of contest station setup do you have?

We run an ICOM IC-756 Pro into an LDG AT-200pro auto tuner, which tunes a homebrew Windom (80 - 6) sitting at approximately 30' in the air. With this setup I've made some pretty good contacts. Just a couple of weekends ago, Robin and I worked the PODXS 070 1K Party. Overall, I tied for 5th and Robin finished 14th. Of course she allowed me to operate more of the contest than she did. Back in February, Robin worked the PODXS 070 Valentine Sprint. This sprint was on 40, 80, and 160 only. Robin was top YL in this contest and 2nd overall. Another contest we worked was the PODXS070 Three Day Weekend. This was all bands and working PODXS070 members only. We ended up placing 13th (Robin) and 15th (Tim) which wasn't bad considering we evenly split operating time in this contest.

I'm still awaiting results for the TNQP, NAQP, and CQWPX. I know in the CQWPX, I'll likely be down in the rankings considering the magnitude of the contest. However, looking at the preliminary results they have listed on their site, I'm sitting at #4 rookie op in the US.

Okay, tell us all about your experiences, contest placements and strategies. We'd love to hear them.

73 de AJ4JD,
Tim