IARU HF World Championship - 2020
Call: W1NN
Operator(s): W1NN
Station: W1NN
Class: SOABCW LP
QTH: OHIO
Operating Time (hrs): 17
Remote Operation
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Zones HQ Mults
-------------------------------------
160: 20 5 0
80: 17 5 1
40: 346 18 22
20: 222 17 21
15: 123 18 20
10: 36 9 7
-------------------------------------
Total: 764 0 82 71 Total Score = 318,852
Club: North Coast Contesters
Comments:
The IARU is a real favorite of mine. With its 24 hour format, it’s pretty
easy to operate full time, especially with the 8 AM local start time. Being
able to work everyone really keeps the rates up. And the HQ stations usually
have really good antennas and they can pull in my weak LP signal. I have
operated every year for at least the last 11 years.
This year was quite different for me. Normally I would be at home in Ohio for
this contest, but, thanks to the virus, I am still stuck in Japan, where I
usually just spend the winter. The remote connection to my modest station in
Ohio is still working fine, but the winter has taken its toll on my antennas,
and two of them have developed problems. My very best antenna, an 80 meter
dipole, suddenly develops a high SWR after a couple of contacts, rendering it
nearly useless. The K3 will load my coax-fed 160 dipole on 80, but it doesn’t
work well at all. No surprise there.
The other antenna problem is my little tribander. It’s fixed at 35’ on a
mast. When I left in December, it was pointed west, but, probably due to stormy
weather, it now points south. When I’m home I turn it on Europe and it works
very well but I have no way of doing that from here. I was hoping that
conditions would be so good that it wouldn’t matter where my antenna was
pointed, but that certainly was not the case.
Things were actually worse than I expected. In 2019, when the tribander was
pointed at Europe, I managed 93 contacts in the first hour, hopping between 15
and 20. This year I barely made 42. Very few Europeans could hear me on the
tribander. On 15, the 40 meter dipole made a fair substitute allowing me to
work most of the loud stations, but almost no Europeans could hear me on 20. In
desperation, I tried loading the 40 dipole on 20. The K3 managed to load it
okay and amazingly I found that worked better than the tribander, allowing me to
work most of what I could hear. But I was clearly pretty weak. After five
hours of struggling like this – and with only 185 contacts in the log - I took
a couple of hours off to get a little sleep, admitting to myself that I was not
going to put in a full time effort this year. It was 2 AM Japan time.
After my nap, I continued with the high band struggle until it was almost dark
in Ohio. Conditions on 20 improved as the day wore on, but I still couldn’t
run and my best hour was only 48 contacts. At 0030Z, I switched to 40. Finally
I had an antenna that was actually meant for the band I was on. I could
actually call CQ and stations would answer! I focused on 40 for most the rest
of the contest.
Overall, I still enjoyed this strange experience, and operating like this was a
lot better than not operating at all. I stayed in the chair for about 17 hours
and ended up about 500 contacts below my 2019 effort.
I’m sure we all hope that the world will be back to normal by the time the
2021 IARU comes around.
73, Hal W1NN
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