North American QSO Party, CW - August
Call: K3FIV
Operator(s): K3FIV
Station: K3FIV
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: CA CM88eu
Operating Time (hrs): 8
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 11 6
80: 33 17
40: 84 37
20: 93 36
15: 14 9
10: 9 8
-------------------
Total: 244 113 Total Score = 27,572
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Team:
Comments:
Rig: Flex-3000
Ant: 135' Carolina Windom @ 35', all bands
QTH: 100 miles N of San Francisco, overlooking the Pacific
With the media reporting that there was a strong solar storm that might even
bring down the power grid, it didn't look good for contesting. I hadn't
expected to be on the air anyway, but since I've never worked a contest during
a major storm (at least knowingly), I decided to see what it was like. It's
all part of my mission to see what you can do with 100W and a wire.....
It turned out not as bad as I expected. Signals did seem unusually weak,
especially from the other side of the continent. But noise on 20/15/10 was
also unexpectedly low, with S2 signals easily copyable above S0-S1 noise.
Lots of people couldn't hear me though, so I suspect noise was bad further
east. Also, I didn't hear much at all from the Far East - ME, RI, VT, VE1,2
etc. All through the contest, I never even heard a single station from outside
NA on any band - which is very unusual. A short opening on 10 brought in a
handful of East Coast stations, which was a nice surprise. Signals on 80 were
pretty strong, but the noise was too painful to stay there long.
I treated this more as a sort of DXing than contesting. Did all S&P, moving
around the bands to see how the storm conditions was affecting things. Found
the VP9, V31, and XE, but only a few VEs. Was surprised to work Jim W7CT in UT
who had a strong signal on all 6 bands - even without a real 160M antenna on my
end.
The NAQP format is nice -- long enough to have fun, short enough to be fun!
The 100W limit really helps to "level the playing field" too.
73,
/Jack de K3FIV
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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