ARRL 160-Meter Contest
Call: K8FC
Operator(s): K8FC
Station: K8FC
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: CO (DM78)
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 894 Sections = 79 Countries = 13 Total Score = 171,948
Club: Grand Mesa Contesters of Colorado
Comments:
Well, congratulations to K9DX for a record that I shouldn't think will be broken
in many years.
This contest is always a challenge from this location in Colorado but one I
enjoy.
Countries worked were
9Y,CM,CU,FM,HP,JA,JT,PJ2,VK,VP2M,XE,YV and ZF. The only section I missed
was NT and I did not think he was on but I see from other reports that he
was worked.
The absolute best thing about this past weekend was that I was called by Chak
JT1CO and that made the long hours all worth it. Wow it is amazing how one
contact changes your whole prospective. :-)
It is amazing the way the spotlight effect seemed to be in play for this
contest. My good friend W0GG was running phased verticals pointed NE and he was
suprized that they were not as effective to Europe as he expected. Seems the
spotlight favored Texas, NM, AZ etc. Many of the reports I have read from
the dx stations who were on reported that the signals were down quite a bit
from the east coast and peaked in the states mentioned above.
As many have mentioned in multiple posts, receive antennas are key to this
contest in our area.
I really believe that you can be an alligator with a dipole if you cannot
hear the dx under the static, qsb, key clicks, intermod etc.
Other observations on the contest.
I think if I had spent a little more time CQing instead of roaming the band
looking for mults I would have scored a tad bit higher, in actuality my total
qso's are down from last year by 8% but my multipliers are up by 3% and when I
look at last years score I am within a hundred points. I dearly wanted to get
to the 1000 qso mark, but again I spent too much time wandering around. In this
contest when you give up a run frequency it takes a lot of patience and time to
set up a new run frequency, there just isn't that much spectrum on this band.
Murphy did not visit me this weekend, everything seemed to run flawless.
The Polish Prince must be smiling at me :-)
I could not have operated from here listening to my transmit antennas, there
was just too much noise. Boy, the east/west ne/sw beverages really made the
difference. I would be listening to the ne bev and I would hear someone
down in the mud calling and I knew they had to be to the west, just a flick
of the switch and these guys sounded like they were in the back yard. This
worked this way for all beverage directions. The phased pennant system has
been a major disappointment and it is coming down to be replaced with more
beverages.
Band conditions were mostly quiet both nights (on the beverages that is) but
QSB was very prominent. You had to have a number of repeats on some
stations and wait until they peaked to get all of the report.
On the first night at 2:15 local Saturday morning I was really excited to
hear W2IB calling cq in the clear with a great signal. I gave him a call
and he came right back to provide me with the 79th section multiplier which
was NNY now all I needed twas NWT which I later learned would not come to
pass.
There were intermod artifacts all up and down the band these along with the
key clicks served to make it a very noisy environment.
Geez, this is the first time I have had so many dupes in the log. I don't
understand what caused this. I had over 47 dupes after about 15 hours
operating. As a matter of fact towards the end of the contest on Sunday
morning better than 60% of the people answering my cq were duplicate
contacts. I wonder what caused this phenomenon ?
Happy holidays to you all, may they be safe and joyful.
/joe k8fc
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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