CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: N6WG
Operator(s): N6WG
Station: N6WG
Class: SOAB QRP
QTH: Newark CA
Operating Time (hrs): 34.5
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 2
40: 72
20: 190
15: 99
10: 35
------------
Total: 398 Prefixes = 220 Total Score = 168,960
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
WHAT A BLAST! Friday night when I quit around midnight, I was
25 Qs ahead of last year. At 10AM Saturday I was 30 Qs ahead
and really on a tear. Then from 9 AM until noon Saturday, it
seemed like there must have been some solar event, as signals
just dried up on all bands. Things stayed slow during the
afternoon, and by 5PM, I was 14 Qs behind last year at that time.
I started worrying about whether I would be able to beat my
2005 score, which was my primary goal. When I knocked off at 11PM
I was still behind by the same 14 Qs.
Sunday morning things started picking up but slowly. It wasn't
until 3PM Sunday that I finally passed last year's Qs at
that hour. During the last two hours I ran at twice my 2005
rate and pulled ahead by a good margin.
I wound up with 398 Qs vs 387 in 2005, a 3% improvement, and
220 prefixes vs 191 last year, up 15%. My score jumped from
123,959 to 168,960, up 36%. The jump seems due to the amount of
DX I worked, which really surprised me. Lots of those Qs
were worth more points than my Qs last year. Along the way, I
picked up eight new countries--IS9, JT1, KH0, KH5, OE, OH0,
VK9 and YE. Not bad for a K2 at 5w and my (in)famous WimpyWire
antenna system.
My log showed 239 1pt Qs, 29 2pt Qs, 97 3pt Qs, 9 4pt Qs and
24 6pt Qs. The 3, 4 and 6pt Qs were 32.7% of my 398 QSOs, so
that explains the big jump. I had nothing like those numbers
last year. This year I averaged 1.8 Qs for each new prefix
I worked.
For this year using scrap coax I added a coaxial receiving loop
for 80 and 40. It worked very well there. When noise really
came up on 20, I tried it there too, and it worked very well,
even copying the European stations. Now I plan to add a loop
optimized for 20m to nest inside the 80/40m loop.
I tried a bit of semi SO2R, using my new K2 as the operating radio
and my old K2 as the search receiver. I wasn't too successful, but
I did add about 6 QSOs as I found them with the search receiver.
I'm not really set up yet to use both K2s as transmit radios due
to lack of a second decent antenna. That's in the works for a
Summer project.
The biggest problem I had was trying to squeeze in 36 hours of
air time. Sleep, meals and some family chores really eat into
those hours. I managed 34.5 hours, which is a bit better than
last.
Hope you all had as much fun as I did. Hope to work many of you
during Field Day in June.
Thanks for all the Qs.
73, Bob N6WG
The Little Station with Attitude
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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