CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 1999
Call: H44MX (K1XM op) Country: Solomon Islands
Mode: CW Category: Single Operator
Zone: 28 Low power
BAND QSO ZONES COUNTRIES
160 4 3 3
80 161 19 20
40 699 25 68
20 558 29 74
15 525 31 65
10 1110 30 55
---------------------------------------------------
Totals 3057 137 285 = 3,788,716
Club Affiliation: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Equipment Description:
Icom IC-706 IIg
160/80/40 Butternut HF-2V with 160 kit and top hat, 20 radials
20/15/10 Homebrew vertical, two elevated radials per band
Comments:
Pathetic country multiplier, huh? As a comparison, K1RO, the top
YCCC low power US station, worked 17 less zones than I but 124
more countries. That's the joy of low power from the Pacific.
On the other hand, here are the low power records for Oceanea and
for zone 28:
NH6T(N0AX) 2,461,536 2713 119 189 -- 1993
9V1YC 2,679,948 2772 144 320 -- 1992
I had a couple problems:
The IC-706 IIg took a fall onto the tile floor. It worked but
the main tuning knob shaft encoder was broken. This made the
main tuning control completely unusable. I used the computer to
change bands and used the up and down buttons on the handheld
microphone to tune within bands. The Band Up button was also
broken and sometimes the radio would start switching bands all
by itself.
We had power outages most days. The electric company had one
scheduled for the first four hours of the contest. I searched
for a rental generator. The only thing available was a 5KW
diesel. To start it you attach the crank, turn it until the
engine is spinning, throw the switch, and pull the crank out
before it rips your hand off. It took four people and 45
minutes to get it running, and so I missed the beginning of
the contest.
Some of the radials dropped off the low band vertical. This
changed the resonant frequency enough that I could not load it
on 80 and 160. All but three QSOs on those bands were made
the second night after I fixed the radials.
Being so close to the equator the bands actually folded in the
middle of the day. It happened suddenly, almost like a switch
was thrown. It was worse the first day than the second.
Since I was single-op and had no amplifier or antenna rotor it
was easy to change bands. I usually complied with requests
to QSY even if the station was not a multiplier. A big USA
multi-multi had me QSY six times near the end of the contest,
all for one lousy QSO. I won't mention callsigns but Tim owes
me big time.
I used WriteLog as my logging program. My notebook computer has
a 6G hard drive and I recorded the entire contest.
The Vatican is not in zone 28.
Some American operators seem to believe that the way to work a
station is to call continuously. We're now worse than the
Europeans. I had to go split a few times - apologies to anyone
who was operating 1 KHz above me when I did it. At least on CW
I don't get many people sending their last two letters!
The secret to breaking a record is in picking a record that is easy
to break.
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