WAE DX Contest, SSB
Call: SV9CVY
Operator(s): DL6FBL
Station: SV9CVY
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: KM25FI
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Summary:
Band QSOs QTCs Mults
-------------------------
80: 88 51 128
40: 353 446 198
20: 952 829 166
15: 9 0 14
10: 2 0 4
-------------------------
Total: 1404 1326 510 Total Score = 1,391,790
Club: Bavarian Contest Club
Comments:
This was my third contest from SV9CVY. I arrived at Mike's place on Wednesday
afternoon. The plane was 2 hours late, yet this time I only had to pay 56 EUR
excess baggage. After saying hello and exchanging some stories, the antenna
work started. There were three open projects: 1) completing a heavy-duty 26.7m
free-standing Titanex V160HD on top of the roof garden, 2) building a 3-ele
Quad for 10/15/20m from scratch and old junk (tnx DL8WPX for the software
design) and hanging it at about half height on the 30m Tower fixed to JA/BY, 3)
putting a K9AY Loop somewhere.
Projects 1 and 2 took all the rest of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We
finished work about 2 hours before the contest, when I started to build up the
station in the shack. Station setup went slowly, and I was facing many
problems, which could all be solved, but took away time. Worst problem was that
my laptop computer crashed three tines within minutes, and I couldn't find any
problem. Must be a Hardware problem, and I should better put that 5-year old
IBM Thinkpad A31 finally in the junkbox.
After having a almost fuctioning setup, I made the decision at 10 minutes
before the contest to start with PAPERLOG. Boy, was that a culture shock. I
really went through the first night with 218 QSOs and 213 QTCs on paper! And -
no computer also means no CQ machine. All CQ'ing the whole Saturday was made by
myself! Because I had had almost no sleep since Friday's sunrise, I felt
dead-tired and needed a break at 0645z Saturday. I slept for about 2 hours.
Around local noon we found another computer. I installed Win-Test, drivers for
a USB-to-serial interface, and for the Parallel port under Windows XP. Around
1200z that was working, and I started typing in all previous QSOs and QTCs, as
I had decided it doesn't make sense any other way. At 1300z I was back in
business, a lucky computer user again!
Propagation was very bad, and I had not one single contact on 15m and 10m all
Saturday long. JA was marginal, and the US stations were mostly at the ESP
level throughtout the whole afternoon. Around 2000z 20m opened up finally, and
I could manage a clock hour with 144 QSOs and 108 QTCs, followed by two more
hours with 200 and 170 QSO/QTC points.
The two other off times were put somewhere in the dead of the second night and
morning, and from Sunday 0900z I was to operate without break till the end.
During one of the off times I finally found the time to make some modifications
to the interface boxes, and could steal the PTT and voice signals from
somewhere, so at least on Sunday I was back in normal business pressing <F1>
instead of shouting myself.
Yet I could not catch up with my fellow competitors like 4O3A, UU7J, and others
- so this contest is just good for the Olympic idea... ;-)
BTW: today on Monday we finished the K9AY, but it does not work properly yet.
No directivity noticable. We'll see tomorrow... At least this "working holiday"
helped in getting up new stuff and finding bugs, which gives a better starting
point for the upcoming CQ WW SSB contest next month, which I will also do from
here. Thanks Michael for taking up with me... ;-)
73 Ben
SV9/DL6FBL
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