CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: YS4RR
Operator(s): K9GY
Station: YS4/K9GY
Class: SOAB LP
QTH: EK53JK
Operating Time (hrs): 41.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 87 10 11
80: 499 19 57
40: 1058 23 71
20: 997 25 68
15: 668 18 38
10: 14 4 7
------------------------------
Total: 3323 99 252 Total Score = 2,618,109
Club: Society of Midwest Contesters
Comments:
Many thanks to Raymundo YS1RR for letting me use his YS4RR call and Cangrejera
Beach QTH (about 16 feet ASL). Also many thanks goes to my XYL for letting me
go on these contest-expeditions (especially over the Thanksgiving holiday).
Thanks to Thelma for the great cooking and Tono for all the tower climbing.
This is my 2nd CQWW as DX, 4th Central American operation, and 6th
contest-pedition.
With all these airline restrictions these days it was a concern whether I could
get two bags each less than 50 pounds. Fortunately both bags made it under that.
Preferred airline of choice is Continental. They are on time, provide real food,
and Houston is actually a nice airport! This year I stayed until Tuesday and
that was a good plan which allowed some WARC and 160m emphasis after the
contest.
Customs at SAL delayed me about an hour and half. Guess that is good motivation
to improve my Spanish before my next trip. Last year I had the CRAS permit at
the airport but this year due to a delay at the ARRL with my IARP I did not
have the CRAS permit on hand yet.
Congrats to my Yaesu FT-857D which is a workhorse making over 15k QSOs in
contest-expeditions. Good practice in pileup management! The JA's get the award
for best behaved. The award for most butchered call by me goes to NX2PX/M ouch!
Field day style operation combined with seat of the pants planning resulted in
some initial problems with the 160m dipole. Enough tinkering and the use of a
tuner got it back in line. Achieved better height and orientation on the
antennas this year versus last year. No thunderstorms at all this year which
helped 160 and 80 compared to last year. Seems like I was found pretty quick
upon QSYing to a new freq. Maybe that's due to the skimmer usage these days.
Microham USB interface seemed to have a slight problem which wasn't figured out
until after the contest when I restarted the computer...duh! Need to work on my
bandpass filter planning as the FT-817 for 10m QRX was not as helpful as hoped
for.
I'm convinced on the 20 minute sleep breaks. Works real well but just need to
keep it to 20 mins. My first break ended up being 30 mins which was probably 10
mins too long. Total sleep time 4.5 hours. My pre-contest routine of getting
three hours sleep from 2pm-5pm local was disrupted and that hindered my effort
initially. Overall time management was better this year versus last year.
Beat my score from last year. Always good to set a new record for El Salvador.
Thanks for all the QSOs: 75.5% NA, 16.1% EU, 4.2% AS, 3.2% SA.
Dipole antennas (heights approximate):
160m balun @ 95 feet (inverted V)
80m balun @ 72 feet (used for 10m also)
40m balun @ 49 feet (used for 15m also)
20m balun @ 33 feet
Best of health to all,
Eric
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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