ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW
Call: WE9V
Operator(s): WE9V, KO9A
Station: WE9V
Class: Multi-Op HP
QTH: WI
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80: 163
40: 423
20: 474
15: 74
10: 130
------------
Total: 1264 Sections = 80 Total Score = 202,240
Club: Society of Midwest Contesters
Comments:
Wow, that was pretty fun. Neither Jim nor I wanted to do serious single ops, so
we thought we'd do a not serious multi-op together. It was pretty fun. Oh
yeah, the contest was okay too.
What turned out as a non-serious start, ended up a serious score. On paper, we
beat the WI record set by me and K9PG from the old KS9K/W9JA station in 1997.
Jimmy's and my score/record may not stand after log checking, but it may.
Started Friday night dissecting my SO2R setup and trying to get two computers
networked with Writelog. The networking part was easy, as I have 4 networked
computers in the shack, but the Writelog part was hard. I run Win2k on my main
PC, and still run Win98 on my old PC. After reading and rereading K9JY.com and
writelog.com's help, I was finally able to get it going after a few hours.
Jimmy showed up around 11am Saturday and I decided that we needed some antenna
work on 80M. My main 80M antenna is a K8UR style vertical dipole 2 element
parasitic array. The computer modeling shows it should kick butt, but in
reality, it never seemed any better than my low dipole at 50 feet. It was a E/W
switchable array, and the West position seemed 10dB down from East, even though
SWR was fine. In addition, I have a TON of RFI from the electric company, so
vertical antennas don't do well in that environment. So I decided to drop the
two verticals off the 100' tower and then reuse one of them for an inverted vee
at 98 feet. All was going well. I even got Jimmy up on the tower (I was up at
100' when he noticed that something had to be disconnected at the 25' level. I
didn't want to go back down and back up, so I asked him to do it. He
reluctantly did.) So, it's about 20 minutes to the start of the contest, and
I'm on the way down the tower. I go grab one end of the vee and start pulling
when SNAP!!! I broke the wire about 10 feet from center. The copperweld had a
kink in it and it failed. DOH! So, in we go to start the contest with no
"killer" 80M antenna. We were both getting so psyched to have a 100' high
dipole, but had to settle for the 50' high one instead. (I really miss the 80M
beam(s) at the old KS9K!!!!)
We had rain static on and off the ENTIRE weekend. It was constantly raining
from the start of the contest until still today. Much of Sunday was also
thunderstorms during the day, but no static crashes on the high bands, only the
rain static. If this would have been a SSB contest, between the rain static and
RFI, we would have been doomed.
The flare was pretty cool/massive. We kept hearing a few stations on each of
the bands, but for the most part they were whisper quiet. As soon as I heard it
get quiet, I checked the 1 minute flux plot at http://sec.noaa.gov/today.html.
Sure enough...big one. (Thanks to KH7R & KH6ND for showing me that site many
years ago.)
Jimmy operated the whole 24 hours, while I slept in 3 extra hours, made
breakfast and dinners, and did most of the beer runs. Oh, did I mention the
this was fun? Maybe it was because most of the contest was Miller time. TV was
set up right between the two radios, so we got to watch 3 footballs games (Go
Packers!) and other visual entertainment (no, not that kind) to keep us awake.
80 Mults? Yep, we were one of the lucky who bagged J, thanks to packet, and
barely being able to hear J. I worked him at 0404z on 20M, where he gave us
#71. He QRTd/QSYd a couple QSOs after that. Speaking of hard mults, we only
worked one MB. Mult #80 was VO1AA, who was eventually one of 3 NL's worked.
Mult #79 was WY, J was #78.
Thanks to Jimmy for coming out, and to my wife Shirm for putting up with us.
Stats down below.
Chad WE9V
Least worked, Most worked sections:
MB 1 IL 84
NT 1 SCV 56
VI 2 VA 49
PR 2 MI 42
ND 2 OH 37
MAR 2 EPA 36
WTX? 3 MN 36
MT 3 WI 34
AK 3 STX 33
NL 3 WWA 31
PAC 4 EMA 30
SD 4 CO 28
QC 4 NNJ 27
SB 4 TN 27
SK 4 MDC 27
Class:
Q 154 12%
A 694 54%
B 232 18%
U 154 12%
M 46 4%
2nd station QSOs: (Most S&P, but some running) 355 (28%)
QSO/Sec by hour and band
Hour 80 40 20 15 10 Total Cumm OffTime
D1-2100Z - 1/1 63/34 2/2 6/5 72/42 72/42
D1-2200Z - - 61/11 6/0 20/5 87/16 159/58
D1-2300Z - 1/0 28/3 1/1 61/7 91/11 250/69
D2-0000Z --+-- 31/0 10/1 18/3 14/0 73/4 323/73
D2-0100Z - 47/0 17/0 - - 64/0 387/73
D2-0200Z - 69/4 14/0 - - 83/4 470/77
D2-0300Z 28/0 35/0 4/0 - - 67/0 537/77
D2-0400Z 25/0 24/1 2/1 - - 51/2 588/79
D2-0500Z 30/0 17/0 - - - 47/0 635/79
D2-0600Z 42/0 18/0 - - - 60/0 695/79
D2-0700Z 18/0 5/0 - - - 23/0 718/79 29
D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 718/79 60
D2-0900Z - - - - - 0/0 718/79 60
D2-1000Z - - - - - 0/0 718/79 60
D2-1100Z 16/0 2/0 - - - 18/0 736/79 34
D2-1200Z - 33/0 - - - 33/0 769/79
D2-1300Z - 11/0 14/1 - - 25/1 794/80
D2-1400Z - 9/0 24/0 - - 33/0 827/80
D2-1500Z - 9/0 37/0 8/0 - 54/0 881/80
D2-1600Z --+-- --+-- 42/0 8/0 6/0 56/0 937/80
D2-1700Z - - 6/0 5/0 - 11/0 948/80 44
D2-1800Z - - 6/0 9/0 9/0 24/0 972/80 14
D2-1900Z - 1/0 37/0 6/0 5/0 49/0 1021/80
D2-2000Z - 2/0 27/0 2/0 3/0 34/0 1055/80
D2-2100Z - 17/0 27/0 - 2/0 46/0 1101/80
D2-2200Z - 6/0 26/0 - 4/0 36/0 1137/80
D2-2300Z - 26/0 13/0 5/0 - 44/0 1181/80
D3-0000Z 2/0 31/0 6/0 3/0 --+-- 42/0 1223/80
D3-0100Z 2/0 27/0 9/0 1/0 - 39/0 1262/80
D3-0200Z - 1/0 1/0 - - 2/0 1264/80 57
Total: 163/0 423/6 474/51 74/6 130/17
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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