CQWW WPX Contest, SSB
Call: VO1AU
Operator(s): VO1AU
Station: VO1AU
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Newfoundland
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 400
40: 421
20: 1436
15: 487
10: 1
------------
Total: 2745 Prefixes = 865 Total Score = 8,379,255
Club: East Coast Canada Contest Club (ECCCC)
Comments:
My station is now just a little beyond the TS category, thanks to the addition
of two new 40m antennas: a three-element wire beam pointed south and a pair of
phased quad loops facing Europe. Otherwise a tribander took care of the high
bands, and a wire vertical was my 80m antenna.
My score went up over 2Meg over last year, thanks to better low-band conditions
and no gear failures this time.
Ten metres was a dead loss. A few brief excursions uncovered a few weak
signals, of which I worked only one PY.
Fifteen was lousy Saturday, but quite good Sunday.
Twenty just just plain odd. Saturday daytime, it was the only thing going to
Europe, but for some reason, it just wasn't much good. Europeans seemed to be
working each other very well, and other parts on North America seemed to have
much better openings that way than us. Nearby Gus VO1MP noticed the same thing.
Being this far east no guarantee of better propagation. Then Sunday, 20m also
improved a good deal, but by that time, I was too busy trying to extract all I
could from 15m.
On the first night, 40m was typical - Europeans loud, but so loud with each
other that hearing NA below 7100 seemed very difficult. As well, my phased quad
loops seemed to have had an intermittent, so I was relegatd that first night to
my trusty vertical dipole - good for getting through pileups, but indifferent at
generating them. Sunday afternoon, my quad loops were working again, and I was
able to capitalise on the Marconi advantage (being 2000km closer to Europe than
W1 or VE3) and run Europe quite well from mid-afternoon on. I was delighted to
find 7100kHz free and began running there. Then my long-suffering (or so she
would have it) wife asked me to come fix something upstairs in the real world.
By the time I got back, RL3A had taken over the frequency, and I was lurching
around trying to find a runnable frequency. I kept the sub-rx on 7100, and then
RL3A's run seemed to go dry, I asked if I could take over. (Heck, if you don't
ask, they can't say yes, right?) He said yes, bless him! And, so I finished up
running more 6pt/q Europeans until the bitter end.
Eighty was very productive both nights, and a good resort near the end of the
contest when I was lurching around 40m.
I did have one rather ugly situation emerge. Saturday, I was on 20m running
Europeans at a reasonable, if not stellar, rate, when W8MJ comes on 200Hz away
and asks if the frequency is in use. He's s9 off the back of my beam. I tell
him it is, and keep running. He asks again. I tell him it is and keep running.
He starts calling CQ, working one European for every three of mine, irritating
me no end. Can he really not hear me? All these Europeans and the occasional
Yank can. Finally after 20 minutes of this, W8MJ informs me that the frequency
has been in use for some time. I reply, agreeing with him, but with a somewhat
different perspective on the matter, and indicate I plan to stay. W8MJ then
informs me that "all you Canadians are rude, but I'm going to move anyway," then
buggers off.
An innocent explanation is that for whatever propagation anomaly, he couldn't
hear me and obliviously tried to run until the anomaly changed and I suddenly
became a problem which he tried to resolve through a crude generalisation.
An alternative explanation may have been that this was a willful attempt at
taking over a frequency that didn't work out to plan and he expressed his
frustration through a crude generalisation.
In either case, neither W8MJ nor anyone else has any business slagging off
entire countries. He should be ashamed of himself.
All in all, this was fun. Thanks to CQ for sponsoring such a fun contest.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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