ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: NX5M
Operator(s): NX5M, KU5B, N5XJ, N5DUW, KJ5T, NW7DX
Station: NX5M
Class: M/S HP
QTH: TX
Operating Time (hrs): 33
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW: 1554 166
SSB: 930 157
-------------------
Total: 2484 323 Total Score = 2,606,610
Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club
Comments:
Felt like throwing in the towel before the contest even started. KU5B arrived
at the station around 11am Friday, while I was out of town, to find that
recently added cows decided to almost totally destroy feedlines, control lines,
rotor cables and phasing gear to half of the 10m antenna system. When I arrived
at the station around 245pm it became a mad rush to try to make repairs to all
of the damage. At least in the end we got it all working for the most part but
quickly found right at the start of the contest that there were other issues
that were unknown. Something had changed somewhere which altered the swr when
running multiple antennas on ssb so we were limited on the amount of power we
could use. For what we could run on ssb we may as well have used a 600w
amplifier. On cw everything was good enough but still had to cut back power a
little.
One of my worst fears came true this year. We were almost totally blacked out
to Mexico and the plentiful XE multiplers. I think we logged 10 total qsos
but every one of those was a struggle to hear and work. Mexico just was not in
our footprint and it is really irritating to be too close to be able to have a
chance at working those 32 multipliers. For all I know a station 50 miles east
of the area may have been able to hear them.....but all that matters is that "we
could not".
Although we were able to work all 50 states on both modes this year there were
still several areas that were almost totally silent. We worked a very low
number of W4's and who would have thought that Arizona would be attenuated to
less than 10 qsos overall. Also, very poor results from W8 and W9 and other
than Friday night W0 was missing in action as well.
The goal was 3000 qsos and 350 mults so we fell short. If the band had been
open to the areas mentioned above I am sure we would have reached the goal. If
we had spent a little more time on ssb perhaps the rates would have been a
little higher resluting in more qsos but it was hard to go to ssb when it was a
compromising situation.
Oh well, the team here knew full well that the 6-year winning streak would end
at some point and that this would probably be the year it would happen as we
have moved into a new cycle.
We had a good time, some good laughs and some good food. Now that there is a
break from contesting comes the time to find existing problems and fix them.
We will be back even if I have to assassinate those 30+ cows!
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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