CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: WC1M
Operator(s): WC1M
Station: WC1M
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 7
40: 458
20: 957
15: 1094
10: 42
------------
Total: 2558 Prefixes = 788 Total Score = 5,857,204
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Antennas:
160: 160/80 trapped vee at 65'
80: NE/SW delta loop at 75'; 160/80 trapped vee at 65'
40: 4-square with 240 buried radials
20: 4-el w/30ft boom @72'*; C3E @50'*
15: 5-el w/24ft boom @50'*; C3E @50'*
10: 6-el w/24ft boom @50'*; C3E @50'*
570' NE beverage
* - each yagi on separate tubular crankup or guyed mast
Equipment: FT-1000D/Alpha 87A, FT-1000MP/Acom 2000A, Writelog, Heil BM-10
Boomset
This was my best single-op effort of the 2001-2002 season. I didn't do
particularly well in CQWW and was so sick during ARRL DX that I had to quit
halfway through. WPX CW is one of my all-time favorite contests and it was a lot
of fun this year. My score is slightly lower than last year, though the
composition is better: more 40M 6-pointers and more mults. I'm proud of the
score because conditions weren't nearly as good as last year. It's always nice
to feel that the station and skills are steadily improving from one year to the
next. Then there was my new Secret Weapon, which made a huge difference (see
below.)
Conditions: It's hard to describe the conditions. Clearly, they were not as good
as the excellent conditions last year. At times the propagation was quite good,
with good signals from EU on 15, 20 and 40. JAs came in loud and clear Saturday
morning on 20, but participation was light again this year. In fact,
Friday-Saturday conditions were pretty reasonable, though the run rates were
lower than last year. Even though the K index was low and space weather was
minor, conditions got worse on Sunday. 15M rates were much lower both mornings
this year, with Sunday being quite poor: last year I ran up 512 contacts from
1000z-1600z Saturday and 466 for the same period Sunday. This year the numbers
were 481 and 302 respectively. 15M signal levels stayed low for the rest of the
day Sunday. As all have commented, 10M never really opened. I knew it would not
open to EU -- all the propagation prediction programs agreed about that (even
though the CS3B beacon on 28.200 was audible.) But 10M openings into SA should
have been better and were not. Either that, or very few stations got on from
that part of the world. My 10M WPX QSOs have steadily declined in the last three
years: 305 in 2000, 112 in 2001 and only 42 this year. I guess the party's
nearly over (now tell me again why I just spent weeks putting up a tower for
10M...) There was more atmospheric noise on the lower bands Sunday and signal
levels remained lower through the end of the contest. There was quite a bit of
QSB, too. 40M was pretty good both days, though noisier on Sunday. 80M was too
noisy to work seriously, even with the beverage.
Preparation: I was so psyched for a good contest that I did all sorts of antenna
work in the weeks prior to the contest, mostly on antennas that I knew wouldn't
be a factor in WPX (160, 80 and 10.) I replaced a bad trap in the 160/80 vee,
repaired the 80M delta loop (broke at a lower corner) and erected my fourth
"tower": a 6-el 10M monobander with a 24' boom on a 50' AB-577/GRC military
mast. That makes 222 feet of "stealth" tower, divided into four parts: 72', 50',
50', and 50'. Probably one of the more unusual contest stations (and lacking the
critical element of height), but much more flexible than my old two-tribander
setup: now I have two choices on each band, with one selection having
independent rotation from the other bands. This made for minimal need to wait
for rotors to turn. The antenna work got me in the mood for the contest and I
made quite an effort to prepare. I got breakdown sheets from last year's leaders
(tnx K5ZD, K1KI and KQ2M) and put together a reasonable band plan (see below.) I
got a fair amount of extra sleep in the weeks before the contest, although I was
so excited on Friday that I couldn't sleep during a scheduled afternoon nap. I
decided to eat less food less often this time and had all the anti-sleep food
purchased well ahead of the contest.
Operating: K5ZD looked at my rate sheet from last year and gave me some
excellent advice: hit 40M hard the first night. Last year I got seduced by the
high rate on 20M, running up 560 QSOs in the first five hours. I didn't get to
40M until it was too late, and couldn't make up for it the second night. The
result was too few 6-pointers from EU. Randy says the 40M rate is never as good
the second night, and he's right. I tried to start the contest on 40M, but
couldn't get a run going after several minutes of CQing. I jumped down to 20M
and ran off 134 QSOs the first hour, plus 4 on 40M on the second radio. At 0100z
I went back down to 40M and ran off 300 QSOs in the next four hours. The rate
wan't huge, but since the EU percentage was very high this was equivalent to
nearly 600 QSOs on 20M! I made it back to 20M at 0500z, in time for a good EU
sunrise opening and another 250 QSOs. I felt pretty good taking my first break
at 0800z with 739 QSOs in the bag and much higher QSO points than last year.
Break Strategy: Randy advised trying to run the first 24 hours without a break
and taking off from 0100z-0400z Sunday and most of Sunday afternoon. In fact, he
said if the rate's good, he'd be happy to take the last 12 hours off. I think
that's the right approach because DX participation really drops on the second
day. I wanted to work through the wee hours of 0800z-0900z Saturday, but the
rate had dropped below 50 and I felt it was a losing cause. I might have missed
some Pacific stations on 40M, but probably would have ended up working mostly US
stations for 1 point. I was going to sleep for a couple of hours, but that
stretched into about 3 hours and 15 minutes. When I got back on at 1115z, signal
levels on 20M and 15M weren't huge yet. I hope I didn't miss too much during the
1000z hour. If I had it to do over again, I would have worked 20M or 15M that
hour. I didn't take my next break until 0300z Sunday. The only regret I have
about that was the 1700z hour Saturday, when the rate dropped to 38 per hour.
That's typically a low point here and I should have taken that hour off. I would
have stopped at 0100z, but I was running about 50 per hour on 40M and wanted
those 6-pointers. I slept for two hours and caught the 20M EU sunrise opening
from 0500z-0600z Sunday morning. The rate was only 60 per hour or so, but that's
pretty good for the second day. There was very little 40M action by 0700z, so I
took the next four hours off, getting back on at 1100z. Again, I wonder if
anything was happening during the 1000z hour. I was amazed to find that 15M
wasn't really open yet and had to run mostly on 20M. Only about 50 contacts for
the 1100z hour, far below the first day. 20M petered out and I had to go back to
15M, where the rate was very low -- between 30 and 50 per hour for the next five
hours -- what a grind! Once again I stayed on for the 1700z hour, but S&Ped on
20M and 15M without running. I only ran up about 40 contacts, but added some
mults. I probably should have taken a break. I took an hour off in the
1800z-1900z range, worked about 50 stations during the 2000z hour, mostly on 20,
and took my last hour and a half break from 2100z-2230z. I racked up only 76
QSOs in the last two hours of the contest. Propagation was so up and down that
it was impossible to pick the best hours Sunday afternoon. I just did the best I
could.
Second Radio: I think I did pretty well in this department. I've been trying to
hit the second radio hard from the start, but I still need some work on that. I
can do a few contacts on the second radio with the run rate over 100, but I
think I can eventually do more. About 1/3 of the way into the contest I hit the
second radio hard and used it more and more through the end of the contest. Some
have complained that two radios didn't help when only 15M was open, but I always
found something to do with it: mostly pointing the 10M beam south and looking
for SA and Caribbean stations. I'm also able to "stack" each of my monobanders
with the tribander, so I could run EU on the 20M monobander while S&Ping EU and
SA on 15M. At the very least, using the second radio provides something to break
up the monotony of a low run rate. This is a good contest for two radios.
Mults: Better this year, even with worse conditions. My 788 look pretty good
compared to other stations in my score range. I think this was mostly due to
being more aggressive about picking new mults out of pileups and hitting the
second radio hard.
Pac-Man: Before the contest, it occurred to me that successful contesters
operate a lot like Pac-Man. You have to gobble up every little dot and get the
cherries whenever you can. I used to concentrate mostly on new mults when
S&Ping, but I'm moving more and more to working everyone I can hear (provided I
don't have to wait too long.) This is an especially good strategy for WPX.
Fatigue: Once again, I experienced more fatigue the first day than the second.
It's not the short sleep breaks, it's just getting used to the routine. I'm
always too tense for the first part of the contest, wanting to get off to a good
start. I think this makes me more tired. It's also a matter of adjusting to lack
of sleep and constant CW pounding in my ears. Actually, I think the solution is
to exercise more and eat better (i.e., drop a few pounds.) More practice should
help, too.
Secret Weapon: I made a pleasant discovery about an hour before the contest. I
have long used the venerable Heil Pro-Set for all contesting. I've tried many
different headsets over the years and the Heil seems to have the best
combination of sound, isolation, comfort and ergonomics. Still, by the second
day of a contest my ears and head hurt and my ears often get very warm. I
decided to try switching to a pair of lightweight open-air headphones at some
point during the contest, just for some variation. The problem with that has
always been the broad frequency response of good open-air headphones. The
hissing drives me nuts. But I figured I could trade that for an hour or two of
comfort. I tried a couple of sets I had lying around, but they sounded awful.
Suddenly I remembered that I had an ancient Heil BM-10 boom set from which I had
removed the boom (trying to fit it to another headset.) I ran down to the
basement and dug them out of my junk box. The cable was all tangled up and the
ear pads were shot. I stripped off the remains of the mic cable and tore the ear
pads off several old pairs of Radio Shack single-ear telephone headsets. First I
tried a pair of foam ear pads, which were pretty good. But then I tried a pair
of leatherette ear pads that were like small padded donuts (a hole in the
middle.) These were more comfortable and channeled the sound directly from the
headphone elements to my ear canals. When I plugged these phones into the
system, I couldn't believe my ears -- the sound was strong and punchy. In
contrast, the Pro-Set sounded soft and flabby. I knew the copy would be much,
much better with the BM-10. As I'm sure many of you can guess, I have Yaesu
radios (1000D and 1000MP.) It's well-known that the audio output circuits of
these radios have problems driving certain headphones, especially the Pro-Set. A
few years ago, Heil changed the drivers to 200-ohms and that helped a lot. I
retrofitted my Pro-Set with them and they were already in the new Pro-Set I
bought last year. I thought the audio was pretty good until I tried the BM-10 --
what a difference! I'm sure this simple change made a significant improvement in
my copy, not to mention the bonus of complete comfort throughout the contest.
The open-air design is only part of it: I never realized how heavy the Pro-Set
and how much fatigue it can cause. One thing I found was a better ability to
copy a different signal in each ear. I used the "MONO" switch a lot less in this
contest. The downside was more ambient noise, but less than I expected. The only
annoyance was the FT-1000D fan, which seemed higher in pitch this time -- gotta
look into that. It's occured to me that this simple and free improvement was far
more significant than trying to squeeze an extra dB out of my antennas!
Other Secret Weapon: This one is obvious. With many of the top W1 operators not
doing single-op this year, I knew I had a good chance to make the top ten. Got
my fingers crossed. It's always better to compete against the best, but hey,
I'll take the advantage any day! Is it politically correct to thank people for
not competing???
The most important thing was -- I had fun. Hope you did too. See you in IARU!
73, Dick WC1M
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
|