IARU HF Championship -- 1996
ARRL Headquarters Station
Glenwood, Maryland
Call: W1AW/3 (W3LPL QTH) Country: United States
Category: Headquarters Station
BAND QSO QSO-PTS PTS/Q ZONES HQ STNS
160 333 433 1.30 8 3
80 671 1145 1.71 23 7
40 1627 3839 2.36 33 14
20 2619 7473 2.85 49 21
15 1628 5062 3.11 33 16
10 1139 3195 2.81 20 16
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Totals 8017 21147 2.64 166 77
Score: 5,139,207 points
Operators were: AA3NM, K3DI, K3NA, K3RA, KA2AEV, KJ4VG, N3ADL, N3QYA,
N5OKR, ND3A, ND3F, W3LPL, W3MR, WA3WJD, WB4NFS, WM2H, WN3K, WR3E, WR3Z
My original intentions were to video this event and stay out of the way.
I was doing fine until Doug, N3ADL asked me if I wanted to sit down on
20 meters for a while. I thought about it for about 2 seconds and said
sure. That was the best hour I have ever had @ Franks!
This was a joint effort by members of the Potomac Valley Radio Club and
the Frankford Radio Club. All transmitters, antennas and operators were
located at W3LPL. QSL's will be automatically sent to every station
from ARRL Headquarters.
10 Meters: This was the big surprise band for the weekend. We worked
about 400 europeans. We worked three in the first couple of hours
(JX7DFA was one of them). We had a about 270 along with a lot of USA
between 1930z and 0145z. And then the biggest surprise was from 0700Z
on until the end of the contest we worked about 130 more. There was no
flutter at all, and all signals peaked on their true headings. We knew
Bertha was over the path, and it may have set up enough wind shear to
account for the polar path opening with Es conditions on 10 and 15
meters. One more surprise was JA7OWD at 0525Z directly over the pole.
Our best hour on 10 meters was 2100-2200z with 122 qsos. We only worked
4 South Americans, 0 Caribbeans, 1 African, 3 Oceania.
15 Meters: Nice run of Europeans from 0613z to the end. Worked JA1XRP
@ 0531Z, 5Z4BZ @ 0614z, VS6BG @ 1136z along with other JA's. Best hour
on 15 meters was 1800-1900z with 151 qsos.
20 Meters: This is where the bulk of our QSO's were made. We had 13
hours @ rates over 100. Biggest hours were 13z w/ 189, 12z w/ 171 and
16z w/ 164. We should have spent more time looking for Europeans on 20
meters SSB.
40 Meters: Our best hours on 40 meters were between the hours of 0100z
and 0500z. All four hours the rate was over 100 per hour. It was nice
to point the top antenna to the west coast and have the bottom fixed on
Europe. Noise from the storm was a factor but not nearly as much as it
was on 80 and 160 meters.
80 Meters: Conditions were definitely hurt by the extreme noise
generated by the thunder storms from hurricane Bertha. Many passes were
made to 40 and 160. Lots of Canadian activity. Very little long DX
worked or heard. Very little South American activity on the band
considering it is winter down there. Our best hour was 0500z with 69
QSO's.
160 Meters: Same as 80 meters, very noisy and lots of passing from
other bands. Our best hour was 0000z with 38 QSO's. We only worked 4
Europeans on this band and 3 of them were IARU HQ stations, So we only
worked zone 27! We spent about 2 hours trying to work some ZL but never
did get his call, Sorry whoever that was, it was noisy.
IARU HQ Stations: We had 77 QSO's with IARU headquarters stations. It
hurts missing all those HQ stations on 40, 80 and 160 meters. I hope
RAC (Canada) makes a better effort next year, we missed VY1RAC
completely. I heard someone work him but I could not hear him. We
missed 8J3XHQ/JARL and EI0RTS/IRTS, both were spotted on our packet
cluster. Where were the following IARU HQ stations: SP0HQ/SN9C/SQ0DXC,
LZ7A, ZA1A, IY2ARI/IR2MQP, 4V100RC, HB9A, 4U1ITU, 9V1ARU, T70A, P20A,
FF1REF/TM5M, TU2CI, LA7HQ/LG5LG, OE1XHQ, CT1REP, HK3LR? Surely other
IARU countries can get special HQ callsigns, especially in North
America.
CALL HQ QSOS
OM6HQ SARA 6
HG96HQ MARSZ 6
ON4UBA UBA 5
YU0HQ SRJ 5
YP0A FRR 5
S50HQ ZRS 5
DA0HQ DARC 5
PI4AA VERON 5
GB5HQ RSGB 4
OL9HQ CRC 4
LY0HQ LRMD 4
SK0HQ SKA 4
R3HQ SRR 3
L75AA RCA 3
SV1SV RAAG 2
ES4MM ITN 2
ER7A ARM 2
EM5HQ UARL 2
OI1X SRAL 2
Z30M RSM 2
LX0RL RL 1
WRTC Stations: This event added 190 QSOs to our log. We worked each of
the 54 stations at least once. Unfortunately we were unable to really
chase these guys and help them out without seriously hurting our score.
At one point a good number of WRTC stations were on 10 meters CW, and
since our time was limited on CW we concentrated on trying to call WRTC
stations expecially. Sometimes this had the bad effect of reversing the
pileup from the WRTC station to calling W1AW/3 which was bad. We had to
send the exchange to one WRTC station four times for all the stateside
callers suddenly calling W1AW. But we immediately left those
frequencies after working the WRTC stations. On 10 meters the WRTC
stations seemed to all have very equal signals. Also most of the WRTC
stations on 40 meters were equal, 1 or 2 were down from the rest. We
worked the following WRTC stations:
5 QSOS
K6G, K6M, K6X, W6S, W6T, W6X (congrats Danny and Jeff)
4 QSOS
K6B, K6C, K6D, K6E, K6F, K6I, K6P, K6S, K6U, K6V, K6W, K6Y, W6B, W6C,
W6D, W6F, W6I, W6O, W6Q, W6R, W6U, W6V, W6Y
3 QSOS
K6A, K6J, K6K, K6L, K6O, K6Q, K6R, K6T, K6Z, W6A, W6G, W6H, W6J, W6K,
W6L, W6N, W6P, W6W, W6Z, AH3C
2 QSOS
K6N, W6E, W6M
1 QSO
K6H, AH3D
I sure would like to hear how the other IARU HQ stations did, especially
HG96HQ who seems to have a lock on this contest. If you have any
information please send it to me. Thanks and 73 de Bernie, WR3E
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