ARRL DX CW
80 Meters SO from 7J1AAI (op K8HVT)
QSO's Multipliers Final Score
194 39 22,698
The Story
This was a one-evening effort from the western Tokyo QTH of Shige Ohsawa,
JH1GTV. Shige has two towers, with the tallest (120 feet) holding a
two-element 40 meter yagi and at the very top a rotatable dipole for 80.
This antenna works! I operated from 0700Z to 1330Z on Sunday (4 PM to
10:30 PM local time) with about an hour off.
>From Japan, 80 meters opens to the U.S. West Coast around 4 PM local time
and stays open until around midnight or 1 AM. I guess you can sit and
work the West Coast for around nine hours, if you have the patience, but
of course working the East Coast is the challenging part. I worked
stations to the east of the Mississippi River as early as 0839 (N8RR in
LA) and as late as 1324Z (NC9T in IL) but there is certainly not a steady
stream of East Coast stations over this time. As you would expect, the
signals from the eastern U.S. peak at their sunrise and are readable for
an hour or so. This year signals seemed to be coming via the short path,
although Shige says that sometimes East Coast signals peak to the
southeast.
I started out calling CQ on 3504 and stayed there for about three hours.
Alan, K6XO/7 was the first station in the log at 0713Z. By 0900Z I had
worked about 55 stations, mostly 6's and 7's. The 0900Z-1100Z period was
painfully slow but just enough new multipliers showed up in between long
periods of CQ-ing to make it interesting. Between 1000Z and 1100Z, N8UM
(TN), W3LPL, K1KI, N4RJ, N4AR and K3LR called in, but the Q total for this
hour was a woeful 13. After four hours, I had only about 90 Q's. I
supose that many U.S. single ops were catching some sleep on the second
night of the contest, and I was beginning to think that it was a mistake
to work the second night instead of the first night of the contest. I
knocked off to chat with Shige at 1100Z and considered heading back
downtown to my apartment, a train/subway/taxi trip of around an hour, to
get ready for a busy week beginning the next morning.
But with East Coast sunrise coming up, I had to make one last try to get
something going. Am I glad I did! Finding a fairly decent frequency
around 3507, I immediately attracted a pile up of fairly strong East Coast
stations. The next hour produced 76 Q's, followed by an additional 32 in
my final half hour. 80% of this group was east of the Mississippi River,
including four W1 stations ((W1FV, K1ZZ, K1AR, & W1MV) two W2's (WB2P,
W2HTI) and a whole pile of 3's, 4's, 8's and 9's. Wow!
The strongest eastern U.S. signal seemed to be N4RJ, but K3LR, K3ANS and
K1AR were also doing a great job. But the prize for the strongest U.S.
signal belongs to N2IC who nearly blew my ears off when he boomed in at 20
over.
It's interesting to compare this year's results with last year's, when I
put in a similar one-night six-hour effort from Shige's place on Saturday
night. I ended up with 145/35, with no W1's and only one W2 (K5NA). The
1140-1240Z hour that yielded 76 Q's this year only produced 23 Q's for me
in 1995. Of course, East Coast stations may have been busy on 15 or 20 at
this time in 1995, so direct comparisons are a little hard to make.
Nevertheless, 80 meter conditions for this year's ARRL CW test seemed
significantly better than last year.
Thanks to everyone for the contacts. It's a lot of fun working you all
from the other side of the world. I'd like to hear from anybody who
remembers how my signal compared with other JAs. I'd also be interested
in knowing what kind of antenna you were using. It appears that I was
only able to work the superstations in New England but there seemed to be
quite a number of more modest stations coming through from 3-land, 4-land,
8-land and 9-land.
Anyone who wants a QSL should send it direct to me. I don't pay the $70
(!) annual JARL dues so I don't get cards sent via the bureau.
73,
Hal Offutt K8HVT/7J1AAI
25 Libby Lane
Darien, CT 06820
woffutt@netaxis.com
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