Oceania DX Contest, CW
Call: NH2T
Operator(s): N2NL
Station: N2NL
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Guam
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 101 71
80: 156 116
40: 460 288
20: 259 187
15: 716 395
10: 60 49
-------------------
Total: 1752 1106 Total Score = 8,572,606
Club: Florida Contest Group
Comments:
Wow - what a great contest! Kudos to the organizing committee!
The rules for this contest are unique. QSO points are stacked highly in favor
of the low bands, yet prefix multipliers count once per band. So - the dilemma
is this: Do you leave high rates with lots of multipliers on 15/20m to work
much lower rates and fewer prefixes on the low bands but for more points? For
example: my 101 QSOs on 160m gave 25% more QSO points than my 716 QSOs on 15m!
I followed the same strategy used for the North American QSO Parties: Move
around a lot, to try to catch as many stations on as many bands as possible
before propagation shifted.
160: Great conditions to the NA East Coast and Mid West with big signals and
good rate. I had a couple dozen JAs call also which were very welcome, and
finally a nice small run of Europeans right at my sunrise. For some reason I
could get nothing going during NA west coast SR - where was everyone?
80: Also good conditions to NA, however my QSO total suffered a little because
of the time I spent on 160 (2x QSO point value) and 40 (1/2x QSO points but
higher rate). EU was a struggle, I called CQ a lot for nothing and would find
myself going back to 40.
40: Slog fest all night long. The rates were never spectacular because the
band was so jammed up with signals. I often had to go split for Europe because
the pileup would otherwise be unmanageable (constant calling and the station I
was calling could not hear me). I always tried to pick a frequency where 1KC
up was also clear so I wouldn't clobber someone there. Fortunately the band
opened to EU early so I had stations to work all night long following NA
sunrise (again, very few west USA participants seemingly).
20: With a QSO worth only one point, I only operated here briefly to collect
as many prefixes as possible. 20m is a rough band this time of year. It is
difficult to get a good opening to either EU or NA - signals are usually
scattered. Without very much JA activity, time was better spent on other
bands.
15: My money band. Great rate to EU both days, and to NA in my morning.
Endless supply of callers.
10: Early, I struggled to work a couple VKs, KH6's, and N6RO, but nothing from
FO8RZ and ZL except for ZM1A very briefly who was weak and didn't hear me. The
band finally opened to JA and Asia later in the contest period, and stayed open
for several hours but there was little rate to be had. The band opened to CQ
Zones 16/17/21 later but the QRM from BY/UA0 (??) taxis is so bad across the
entire band that it made copying weak callers impossible.
During the afternoon slow time, I forced myself to keep busy by moving
multipliers (prefixes) between bands. 1x mult quickly became 2x and 3x mults
that way. Thanks to all those who QSYed for me!
Without Eastern EU activity, the contest would have been so much slower. NA
rates were good, but didn't come close to the shear volume of European
activity. I suspect activity was down a lot due to the competing contest
events. There was a domestic JA contest and many of them calling CQ higher in
the bands but they were unavailable to me (I called a couple and they just
stopped CQing and went away). JAs are my meat-and-potatoes here and I
appreciate those who did call in.
VK6DXI was pushing me the entire contest period - I know he was sucking up low
band QSOs and all those QSO points so even though I had more QSOs, I was
nervous and pushed myself throughout the contest period. It's somewhat unfair
to him that I'm on a rarer entity, but he did an awesome job as did the other
VK/ZL SO and MO efforts! To Phil FO8RZ: Sorry for not knowing your 160 band
plan - I'll make sure to listen there for you in the future!
Thanks for all the QSOs!
73, Dave KH2/N2NL
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