Russian DX Contest - 2023
Call: KA1IS
Operator(s): KA1IS
Station: KA1IS
Class: SO CW HP
QTH: ME
Operating Time (hrs): 21
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Countries Oblasts
----------------------------------------
160: 2 0 2 0
80: 44 0 19 12
40: 384 0 58 55
20: 375 0 52 58
15: 274 0 55 67
10: 110 0 35 26
----------------------------------------
Total: 1189 0 221 218 Total Score = 3,591,898
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
The Russian DX contest is one of my favorites. For several reasons: You can work
any station for points. It brings out hams from distant mysterious regions of
Asiatic Russia. Its only 24 hours. Oblasts. Also propagation from here to any
part of Russia is more fleeting than to western Europe.
The goal was to compete with AA3B this year. I beat his score from last year.
But he left me in the dust anyway. In roughly the same amount of time he had 500
more QSO's. The difference between good operators and great ones. With serial
number contests, you can tell, right off the bat, how the competition is doing.
The gap only widened with the passage of time.
Highlight of the contest was 15 meters between 0030z and 0100z. For a brief
window the band opened to UA0 with that unmistakable watery sound. Worked
oblasts with names like Zabaykalsky, Amurskaya, and Khabarovsky. Along with
BY's, JA's, YB9 and HS3. Don't have a 15 meter antenna that points NW. But was
able to work them off the side of the driven element for the 40 meter wire beam
which points NE. That's also the antenna on which they were loudest. 67 oblasts
total on 15 meters.
Over the past few weeks I repaired and reconnected most of the antennas at Witt
Hill - even though feedlines and control cables will all need to be moved when I
take down the tent in a few weeks. Its a wasteland of snow and frozen mud. But
just fixing the antennas lifted my spirits. Also, in the style of N1PGA, I
suspended an aluminum 10 meter beam from trees. It worked significantly better
than the old wire beam. The tolerance of element length measurements is too
small on 10 meters to get an effective signal from wire beams in trees. The
EDZ's work well but lack beam width and are high Q. Unfortunately after all that
I missed much of the brief 10 meter band opening because 15 meters was amazing.
Another aspect of this contest. As serial numbers get longer, it becomes
difficult to complete a weak signal DX QSO - but Russian stations exchange
oblast abbreviations, which for the most part are automated, like CQ zones, in
the logging software. They end up doing all the work for the 10 point QSO's.
Antennas: wire beams for 80-15, fixed NE - and some other directions. A couple
of 10 meter EDZ's, an odd shaped inverted L for 160. And the "N1PGA
special" suspended 3 el. 10 meter beam fixed NE.
Hope the world is in a better place next year.
Tom
KA1IS
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