CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB
Call: VU2PTT
Operator(s): VU2PTT
Station: VU2PTT
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Bangalore, MK82tx
Operating Time (hrs): 34
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 0 0 0
80: 0 0 0
40: 56 16 31
20: 479 28 98
15: 300 20 71
10: 4 2 3
------------------------------
Total: 839 66 203 Total Score = 576,198
Club:
Comments:
CQWW SSB is always used here as a prep for my real thing - CQWW CW! The plan was
to operate either SOAB HP or SOSB/20, but being a DX-er as well as to get some
S&P practice, I gave into the temptation of snagging some juicy DX on phone by
opting for SOAB HP. I finally used the GetScores.org live scorboard to motivate
me a bit - my personal competition was with YB4IR I saw was in the same category
:)
Murphy struck my amp while I was checking the station out a few hours before
the contest and it looked like a poor relay contact on the amp affecting both
TX and RX intermittently. Opened up the amp and tried to clean the contacts a
bit and it seemed to be a bit better. Went to sleep and decided I would check
again before the contest starts at 530 AM here. The amp played up during the
rest of the contest and certainly affected my score - looks like I will have to
get a new relay from Harbach Electronics.
It was a slow start with a lot of S&P but around 0500z on the first day, the
band opened up nicely on 15m. 20m heated up later in the day and some of the
state-side signals had to be heard to be believed - many of the W-stations were
heard for a long time between 1200-1900z on 20m but I certainly missed the
opening on 15m.
The usual big guns were around and it was good to say hello to friends like
Rich, K2WR @ KC1XX and Randy K5ZD whom I hope to meet soon when he visits
India. I spent some time listening to these fine ops every now and then between
some small runs and S & P and also made some recordings of K5ZD, K3LR, W3LPL and
KC1XX - all huge signals into VU. VY2JM as usual was another huge signal which
was busting my headset.
As usual in the phone part of the greatest contest, the DX bug bit, and I went
around picking up mults. But the best was when TJ3SL called in on my run
frequency for a new double mult and new entity for DXCC :) 20m was pretty
interesting with all the Caribbean and Central American mults coming out of the
ether for just a few minutes each around 19z the second day.
I missed HQ3Z, my friends at SCCC and some of the easier mults - especially
hearing two Zone 34 stations but not working either. I worked KP4KE on the long
path and another highlight on 20m was working W7WA and N6TJ long path just after
my sunrise. Nothing much to write about 10m with just 4 QSOs. Not as many JA and
BY stations this year and I think conditions were not very good on 20m - I
missed the usual morning EU runs both mornings.
Station improvements have made a difference, especially for phone, and the new
MicroHAM MicroKeyer II really helped a lot especially with the DVK and
interfacing. My station has never been so neat before, without all the wires
dangling around. Another planned improvement is the addition of a Honda 2800
generator this week, which should certainly tackle the power outages we face
here. paradoxically, for the first time this weekend, I did not have a power
outage for even a minute, a major miracle I must say.
The day before the contest, I put up a 40m Inv-Vee instead of my usual 40m
vertical wire and I might blame that for the not so good show on 40m. Will
certainly try to run both antennas for the CW part, but with the limited space
it is a toss up to have a 80m Inv-L quarter wave vertical or miss 80m
altogether by having 2x 40m antennas. If any of you remember how my signal
sounded on 40m, feedback will surely help since I know the signal was getting
out; I did work 9Y4W for a nice double mult on 40m.
Congratulations to the team of the VU2PAI M/S effort, they did a great job from
the country side with the fine antennas at VU2RCT and "-6 db below S0" noise
level as VU2PAI put it when I spoke to him after the contest. Compared to this,
my path to EU and NA had a constant S5-7 rain/electrical QRN, and only dropped
down to S2-3 noise for a few hours. I am sure many of you would have worked
VU2PAI, and their location close to the coast meant they had much better
propagation especially on 15m. I hear Sarat AU2RSB @ Nandu VU2NKS' fine station
also made a good effort on SOAB LP - I am sure the K3 (probably th eonly one in
India) and SteppIR beam at Nandu's QTH would have been serious weapons in his
arsenal.
My current station is an Icom 746PRO, Heathkit SB-200 amp, Force-12 C3S @ 60'
for 20-10m, Inv-vee at 55' for 40m, MicroHAM MicroKeyerII and N1MM Logger.
For the first time, I ran N1MMLogger in multi-op mode over a Wi-Fi network to
ensure a realtime backup log on another laptop fearing power outages which
never happened :)
To round off, I think I took it a bit easy, operated only 34 hours, was lazy to
make the right band changes and stick it out with a few more CQs on 15m which
would have had a big impact on the final score. Not mistakes which will happen
in the CW part :)
Thanks all for some great QSOs and see you all in the CW part.
73 de Prasad VU2PTT, W2PTT
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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