CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 1996
Call: NJ2L Country: United States
Mode: CW Category: Single Operator
BAND QSO QSO PTS PTS/QSO ZONES COUNTRIES
160 75 189 2.52 13 40
80 127 333 2.62 17 56
40 286 796 2.78 28 80
20 989 2896 2.93 35 100
15 436 1268 2.91 23 75
10 11 24 2.18 7 9
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Totals 1924 5506 2.86 123 360 => 2,659,398
43 hours of operation
In the shack: TS-850S, SB-220, 1 kW amp for 160
Antennas:
20/15/10 m: Mosley 4-element tribander at 103 feet
40 m: Cushcraft 40-1CD (driven element of 40-2CD) at 95 feet
80 m: Inverted V at 95 feet
160 m: Inverted L
What a hoot! This was the first full contest effort I've done from my home
station--the tower just went up this summer.
Since this is the one year in a zillion that CQWW CW isn't on a holiday
weekend, I decided many months ago to do it seriously. (Annoyingly, we
almost always travel on Thanksgiving weekend.) I went into the contest
with two goals: Operate at least 44 hours and make 2 million points. I was
in Edmonton (where it was 20 below zero the whole time I was there) on
business the week before the contest and away from home the previous
weekend, so I was pretty crunched for time to set up the station and fix
things that were broken. I even took about 30 feet of RG-213 and 10 PL-259
connectors with me and made up jumpers in my hotel room to save time, then
soldered the connectors on at home. Got home at midnight on Thursday
night. Friday was a vacation day to get everything else ready.
I had figured out a way to use two radios, procured a second radio and
amplifier, and so forth. I was pretty limited since all the antennas
except the 160-meter inverted L and a 20-meter vertical loop share one
feed line via a remote coax switch. As it turned out, I had cabling
problems (no amplifier key line cable for the second radio, missing cables
for the two-radio switch box), had to repair the borrowed amplifier, and
ran out of time to get other problems worked out to use the second rig. So
I abandoned it with an hour to go and set everything up to use one radio.
The contest got off to a slow start. I couldn't run Europe on 40 with the
rotatable dipole--not a big surprise. Most of the trouble was not being
able to hear them. I went to 80 and 160 earlier than usual. 80 was
noisy--I haven't had time to run a Beverage yet--so it was frustrating.
Then 160 gave me a very pleasant surprise: I could work almost everything
I could hear on one or two calls. That was a shock! And I was hearing well
with the inverted L. I slept from 0915 to 1045Z. Things weren't hopping
yet when I got back on, so the sleep seemed well timed. Rochester is a
long way from the ocean! (Zone 4 extends well east of here, just on the
other side of Lake Ontario.)
When 20 opened, I was really rocking. The 1200 and 1300 hours were 137 and
110 Qs, respectively, almost all on 20 meters. Late in the 1300 hour I
went to 15, relatively late in the opening, and had a couple hours close
to 100 Qs each. Now I was getting somewhere! Back to 20 late in the 1700
hour--105 Qs in the 1800 hour. The tribander was doing the job.
I could see by 0000Z that I was headed for well over 2 million points if
things held up--3 million looked possible. With much more noise than
Friday night, 80 was again frustrating, but 160 was very rewarding on
Saturday night. Things slowed to a crawl, so I slept from 0700 to 1000Z to
get a better shot at the western low-band multipliers before sunrise. That
wasn't very productive, unfortunately.
Rates generally weren't as good on Sunday, until the very end. For the
first time in a long time, I had a good JA run on 20 at the very end of
the contest. In the last 70 minutes I had 85 QSOs, mostly JAs, but was
thrilled when V85HG, a 5W0 and an HL called in. What an incredible high! I
can't ever remember working four QSOs in the last minute of the contest,
except from PJ7A in the 1991 CQWW SSB with K1TO.
I could not believe how many DLs, OKs, HAs and Gs called in on 20! I
worked 154 DLs on 20. Unreal.
Running one radio forced me to spend blocks of time hunting multipliers
that I normally wouldn't spend that way in two-radio mode. This turned out
surprisingly well, since I was able to get through easily to almost
everyone I called on all bands. The numbers show pretty well that I'm
weakest on 80, 15 and 40. The rest of the 40-meter Yagi will go up in the
spring, and I'll do something directive for 80 as well. The Beverage will
help a lot also.
My final score is only off my personal best by 60k. That was in 1990, from
a Connecticut station (N8RA) with monobanders and two radios. So this
feels particularly good. Can't wait to get the second tower up!
Congrats, Randy, and all the others who doubled my score.
Continent Statistics
160 80 40 20 15 10 ALL percent
North America CW 24 36 45 51 32 7 195 10.1
South America CW 2 5 13 12 13 3 48 2.5
Europe CW 46 81 207 807 381 0 1522 78.7
Asia CW 0 0 6 106 3 0 115 5.9
Africa CW 2 5 8 14 7 1 37 1.9
Oceania CW 1 1 8 5 2 0 17 0.9
I'll share the hourly breakdown with anyone who wants to see it.
--73, Rus
-------------------------------------------
Rus Healy, NJ2L
nj2l@mdsroc.com
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