WAE DX Contest, CW - 2021
Call: VE9AA
Operator(s): VE9AA
Station: VE9AA
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: NB
Operating Time (hrs): 15:54
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs QTCs Mults
-------------------------
80: 76 10 84
40: 129 130 81
20: 430 496 82
15: 72 66 36
10: 0 0 0
-------------------------
Total: 707 702 283 Total Score = 398,747
Club: Maritime Contest Club
Comments:
In my best Austin Powers voice: 'QTC's Baby, yeah !!!'
Murphy found me 2 hrs in and killed my good amp.
Ran another 1.5hrs with about 90W out on all the good antennas, and 450w on the
single bad antenna on radio #2 doing S&P
My SO2R setup is really weird. I cannot share antennas between radios, so all
the 'good' antennas and good amp are on radio #1 (mostly 4-sq or vertical
arrays) and radio #2 just has a single, low, horizontal ZS6BKW close to some
houses, so it's inefficient and kinda noisy.
Went to bed early after only 3.5 hrs operation, disillusioned with placing
anywhere in the top 10 or 20 in NA. Dang-it-all.
Slept in a little and replaced the amp Sat morning, which is not easy because of
where it's physically located. Wouldn't work. Apparently I broke the keying
cable wrenching the good amp out of there. Murphy ! ! Had to figure that out
and then make up a new cable.
Ran some on Sat and searched 15m HARD....I think 70 of my 72 Q's on 15m were
Saturday and never heard a peep on 10 either day.
Lost some 30-40minute chunks of prime time Friday nite and Sat morning due to
lightning storms. No contest is worth frying all your gear over or worse,
getting zapped.
Really noisy on 20m and the low bands Friday night into Sat morning so watched
TV and made a few Q's and went to bed.
Got started on 20m relatively early on Sunday but 20m was the only game in town
and 10/15 were stone cold and 6 feet under. I could hear some of the big guns
working some EU on 15 but with just wires, I was shut out. I need a few more
sunspots to be even a little bit competitive running just wires.
Sunday was a total slog....I don't know how the full time '36-ers' cope with low
rate like that. I'd rather watch paint dry or grass grow....honestly
To make matters worse on Sunday, every new stn that shows up on 20m from EU gets
pounced on by every hungry wolf that owns a computer in a massive feeding
frenzy for fresh meat. Most of these are casual ops, so you know the outcome.
I know what I say here makes very little difference, but this contest would be
SOOOO much better as a 24-36 hr event. It's like Sweepstakes in Sunday, hi.
N1MMLoggerPLus makes this one fun. As 'DX', I need to be able to punch in
callsigns and work guys, then know CTRL-Z, 1, 2, 3 & 4 keys. Occasionally =
key to repeat a whole line. The EU's do all the heavy lifting.
CU (all of a sudden) in the next one.
Mike VE9AA in New Brunswick, Canada
2 X Icom IC-7410 and an assortment of wire antennas
on all bands. Some bands have more wires than others.
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