1998 CQ World-Wide RTTY DX Contest
CALL: W2UP PA, USA
Single Op. Assisted (all band only)
QSOs Points Zones DX: States
80m: 122 229 8 23 35
40m: 214 413 19 48 42
20m: 391 950 28 80 39
15m: 499 1316 28 79 34
10m: 239 664 22 63 16
Total: 1465 3572 105 293 166 2014608
Station Description: FT-1000D/Alpha 77Dx/Pentium-60 running
Writelog 9.12 with HAL P-38
Antenna(s): 80 - 3 el sloper array, 40 - 2 el Yagi @26m,
20-10 Phased TH7s @ 10/23m
Comments
I used Writelog for the first time, and really enjoyed the program.
It's a very well thought out program, and the support is excellent.
For example, my first 250 QSOs were off by one hour because I had
the computer set for GMT-England time (which automatically corrects
for Daylight Savings Time). After changing the Win config to
GMT-Morocco, that was fixed, but I still had 250 Qs to correct. An
e-mail to Wayne, W5XD about this, and within hours Wayne added a
feature to Writelog to permit correcting all 250 QSOs in one mouse
click! I echo Dick, N1RCT's comments that it was really great the
way it highlighted calls out of the gibberish by comparing it with
the super check partial file. I just started with Writelog a few
weeks ago, and didn't have time to hook up a second radio, but will
definitely do it for next year. (Also need a bigger monitor - a 15
inch screen just doesn't show enough at one time).
I had K1NG's (op KI1G) record breaking score of last year sitting in
front of me the whole weekend as a goal. When I saw a K index of 9
and A index of 98 just before the contest, my heart sank. Things
were
off to a pretty slow start due to lousy condx, especially on the
higher bands. The only positive the first night was a decent peak
on 80m around eastern Europe's sunrise. The high bands were
mediocre
at best throughout Saturday, as well. 10m had very spotty (and
interesting) openings. I saw 9K2HN spotted on packet, and went to
listen for him. He was very weak with the beam east, so I tried
southeast over South Africa, which is usually where we beam
Europe
when the band really isn't open. To my surprise, direct path was
best.
Then had very regional openings for the next hour or two: a group of
Russians, then Italians, then ONs, etc. Saturday night was even
worse
on 40/80, and I went to bed about 11 PM. Things were looking up
Sunday
morning when I worked some Pacific stuff, and even 2 JAs on 40 -
very
rare from this QTH. As usual, I heard K5DJ running JAs like
there was no end to it, and I could just barely hear the loudest ones.
It's interesting that others commented on the good condx for the
start of the contest. It sure didn't seem that way here.
Sunday turned out to be a good day, with excellent European
openings
on 10 and 15. 20 was very poor to Europe on Saturday, but
recovered
for Sunday late afternoon. There were times when Europe was
workable
on 20, 15, and 10 at the same time, and I took advantage of that
moving a few stations for new multipliers. Speaking of multipliers,
I found it a real thrill to catch stations like HS0 for a new
mult, but the fact a mult is just a mult was put in perspective when
the next station I worked was in Ohio, and also a mult! It just was
not the same thrill. I was hoping to catch up on 40 and 80m mults
during the last hour or two of the contest, but thunderstorms in the
area made it impossible to copy all but the strongest stations.
I don't know if it were condx, or the fact my beam was mostly pointed
east, but I found stateside activity to be way down compared with
past years. There were quite a few stations I worked on 4 bands,
and a bunch on 5 bands too. I think Eddie was getting nervous
about a big bar tab at Dayton, and therefore I missed P40RY on 80 :.)
With K1NG's score still in front of me, I managed to come
within 6K of his high claimed score of 1997 (though it was reduced
to 1.985M in the final results). It's up to the log checkers now!
73 Barry
--
Barry Kutner, W2UP Internet: w2up@mindspring.com
Newtown, PA FRC alternate: barry@w2up.wells.com
--
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