CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2023
Call: 7J1AAI
Operator(s): W1NN
Station: JH1GTV
Class: SOAB HP
Class Overlay: Classic
QTH: Tokyo
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 4 1 1
80: 42 10 12
40: 207 28 43
20: 325 28 44
15: 564 28 52
10: 345 29 58
------------------------------
Total: 1472 124 210 Total Score = 1,277,721
Club: North Coast Contesters
Comments:
Thanks to Shige Ohsawa JH1GTV for allowing me to use his fine station in the
western suburbs of Tokyo. This was my first operation at his place since 2019
thanks to the interruption of the pandemic. Shige is the perfect host,
providing me with hot coffee throughout the weekend and a great sushi dinner
Saturday night. He even put up a temporary dipole for 160 for me. Unfortunately
I could not hear much and only worked four JAs.
Shige's QTH is a 35 minute subway/train ride from my apartment in downtown Tokyo
so getting to and from his place is very easy. On Saturday night he even drove
me home so I could get a nap in my own bed.
The equipment and antennas worked well. The station is very efficient and I
didn't have to touch anything but the radio's knobs. Unfortunately, I cannot
say the same thing for the logging software. I prefer Win-Test and a few years
back I purchased a second copy to use at Shige's QTH. In the meantime he
changed computers but Win-test makes it extremely difficult to move its software
to a new computer and after fooling around for a couple of hours, I had to give
up getting it to work and fire up N1MM. There are lots of minor differences and
having to cope with N1MM's quirks throughout the weekend was very annoying. And
moving the file from his computer to my own computer to submit the log after the
contest presented a whole new set of problems which I won't elaborate here.
Win-test makes everything so much easier (except when you want to move to a new
computer).
The contest started with a rollicking 123 Q first hour on 10 meters but the rate
dropped to 70 in hour two. 10 was in great shape and in addition to the morning
US run, I had several good hours running Europe in the afternoon. But 15 and 20
were in terrible shape on Saturday and not knowing what conditions were going to
be like on Sunday, I spent a lot of time on 15 and 20 working hard to put some
contacts in the log. Signals were weak and the noise level was high.
Fortunately conditions improved greatly on Sunday so much that I spent very
little time on 10. Zone 5 signals on 20 were as loud as I have ever heard them.
Low band conditions throughout the weekend were surprisingly good too but
activity was understandably low with everyone focusing on the high bands.
The real problem I had was my call sign. I had forgotten just how hard it is
for many ops to copy. This made S&P operation very inefficient. With my own
call in the US, I can S&P very effectively but not here. About 15% of ops
catch my call the first time. The rest need several repeats, occasionally as
many as six repeats at 25 wpm. I like to operate at 35-40 wpm but QRQ just
makes it harder, so I had to keep the speed down below 31 and sometimes much
lower to get through. A few ops simply ignored my calls, I guess preferring to
work some with an easier call to copy. US ops are considerably better than EU
ops in my experience. Interestingly, the Chinese ops did not have much trouble
with my call. Perhaps they are more accustomed to calls beginning with
"7". As someone else mentioned in their comments, the skill level of
Chinese ops seemed much better to me than a few years ago. The Southeast Asians
are coming along nicely too!
All in all it was one of the best contests ever! Thanks to all of you who make
this contest possible.
73, Hal W1NN & 7J1AAI
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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