Wow! What a contest !
>From V2, we had the good fortune of some good propagation, excellent WX,
some great fun, and not too much to complain about.
Thanks must go to our host, Roy Carty V21N, as well as to the rest of the
Antiguan Amateur community. We also owe thanks to The Royal Antiguan Hotel
for their excellent accommodations, nourishment and service.
We had a little more work to do prior to the contest starting than we had
hoped for, but we managed to get enough done to be competitive. Some of
this included installing receiving antennas (Ewe's), verifying the
functionality of all rotators, installing the "LOOP" network (which
performed perfectly) and hooking up 220v for the amplifiers.
We managed to get an Internet connection for the weekend but had
difficulties with RF from 160 and 80m.
V21N's property is relatively small for such an operation and the 80 and
160 antennas are close to the shack and phone wiring. A quantity of
ferrite helped reduce the 80m problem, but 160 caused an immediate modem
disconnect. During daytime hours, we stayed connected for 8 or 9 hours
continuously. It was really cool seeing us getting spotted in Europe and
the resulting mini-pileups.
A new inverted vee was installed for 160. 160 was very good for us this
year, especially on Friday evening. We had 429 qsos 17 zones and 49
countries by sunrise Saturday morning. As it turned out, we should have
stayed on 15m all Saturday night. N3OC did an outstanding job handling
most of the 160 chores Friday evening.
N2TK and WX0B took the lead on building the 80 meter antennas. This year
we used a dipole and an elevated vertical. This vertical employed the new
1/8 wave radials as described by K5IU in a "Communications Quarterly"
article published earlier this year. The theory of this is quite
interesting and
it performed very well for us. Unfortunately, the noise Saturday night on
the low bands really put a damper on what could have been an outstanding
effort.
For 40m, we had planned to install a second 2el CC40 and stack them using
another WX0B provided StackMatch unit. Unfortunately, several key
components were lost in shipping and that antenna will have to wait to go
up at another time. The single antenna performed very well yielding just
shy of 2500 qsos. AB2E, KA2AEV, and W2UDT swapped duty on 40m. AEV said
"40 stinks".
On 20m, nothing much changed here other than to verify the correct phasing
of the 2 stacked 3el yagis provided by Force12. The WX0B provided
StackMatch performed flawlessly. Tyler, K3MM, started the contest with a
flurry totaling 602 qsos after the first 2 hours. His top rate in this
period was a 329 hour that completed at 0115. It took less than 5 hours to
exceed 1000 qsos on 20 M. Tyler's FT1000MP and Titan Amp performed very
well. Tyler was experimenting with some "noise-canceling" headphones.
Check with K3MM for results. AB2E primarily along with WT3Q, W2UDT, N2SR,
W3FV, and N3OC all sat in from time to time on 20 which never stopped all
weekend.
We had to re-install our main 15 meter antenna on a new tower provided by
our host, as well as assemble and install a second yagi to give us a 5 over
5 stack on 15m. WX0B, who was part of the V26B team this year (and invited
back next year) provided one of his StackMatch units and it worked well.
Initially, we thought we had a problem with the entire antenna system, but
it turned out to be a problem with the transmitter, so we ended up using
V21N's FT990 on 15m. I may be a bit biased as I've always like 15m the
best, but 15 was really good this year. I think we may have missed some
things by sharing the station with 160, but overall we enjoyed good
propagation, good rates, and generally good cooperation by those calling at
the other end. The "last two" phenomena, especially from Europe, is here
to stay I'm afraid - however we've managed to handle it pretty well. N2SR
joined us for the CQWW this year and really dug in and handled the pileups.
On Saturday, we finally qsyed into the U.S. band and worked W4DF as our
first "W" at 1832z. At 1932z, there were 348 more qsos in the log. Whew!
It gets better every year. We did get a brief opening to JA both Saturday
and Sunday, but only worked a total of 53 JA's both nights. Sunday was the
better opening, when we worked 50.
10m was strange. Little surprise eh ? We had sporadic openings and good
rates. Watching the Internet packet cluster connection was frustrating as
we seemed to have unique propagation. We could not hear any of the
stations spotted on 10 m. Of course, there were no stations in the Eastern
Caribbean spotting anything so there was little chance for someone to share
our propagation. W3FV joined the team this year and handled a large
portion of the 10m operation as well as some fill-in time on 20 and 15m.
N2TK and WX0B also split their efforts between 10m and 80m operation.
Given the extra work we needed to accomplish prior to the contest and how
exhausted we all were, we felt that we did fairly well. We do expect that
we will be able to get closer to the NA record if we have better
propagation in the next few years.
Thanks for being part of a great time for us !
Here's our summary sheet:
CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 1997
Call: V26B Country: Antigua & Barbuda
Mode: SSB Category: Multi Multi
BAND QSO QSO PTS PTS/QSO ZONES COUNTRIES
160 477 997 2.09 17 53
80 916 1989 2.17 21 88
40 2476 5830 2.35 31 122
20 4385 11183 2.55 39 165
15 3917 10091 2.58 35 160
10 1973 4826 2.45 26 128
---------------------------------------------------
Totals 14144 34916 2.47 169 716 => 30,900,660
Operator List: WT3Q, AB2E, W2UDT, KA2AEV, WX0B, W3FV, N2SR,
N3OC, K3MM, N2TK, N5NJ
Equipment Description:
160 FT990 / COMMAND TECHNOLOGIES 2500 - INVERTED VEE @ 80, EWE'S
80 FT1000D / TITAN - DIPOLE @80, ELEV VERT 1/8 WAVE RADIALS(K5IU) EWE'S
40 FT1000D / 78A - 2EL CC @ 80'
20 FT1000MP / TITAN - 3X3 @75/30 FORCE 12 / WX0B STACKMATCH
15 FT990 (160) / COMMAND 2500 - 5X5 @80/35 155BA / WX0B STACKMATCH
10 FT1000D (80) / TITAN - 5 EL 105BA @75
73,
Bob N5NJ / V26RN
Robert E. Naumann
N5NJ@worldnet.att.net
ex KR2J, W6V
Plano, TX USA
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