ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: WB0TEV
Operator(s): WB0TEV
Station: WB0TEV
Class: SO SSB HP
QTH: North Texas
Operating Time (hrs): 21.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW:
SSB: 904 115
-------------------
Total: 904 115 Total Score = 207,920
Club: North Texas Contest Club
Comments:
Since operating assisted (my typical contest modus operandi) would not only have
forced me in the multi-op category (which doesn't seem unreasonable), but also
would have put me into mixed mode, whereas I wanted to be a phone only entry, I
opted for high power unassisted. I 2nd the motion of others who would like to
see the creation of single-op assisted categories for SSB only and CW only in
this contest.
What a ride and what contrast with last year! A real joy to work all
continents on a single band and make it look easy, because it was! Had I played
hookey from church and thus not missed 3 hours of prime time Sunday AM the score
would have been even higher.
>From here in North Texas single hop propogation favors an arc that sweeps from
the Pacific NW across upper central Canada and then into New England. Being
centrally located we get good openings to Europe in the morning and a 2-3 hour
long window to JA in the afternoon starting with their sunrise around 2200Z.
As was pointed out by K7ZO in his pre-contest writeup on the ARRL website,
historically one of the best places in the continental US for the 10m contest
is South Texas, so North Texas is still a pretty great place to be.
Not surprisingly the most common mults worked were WA (109), CA (105), OR (63),
NY (42), MA (34). 20% of all my QSOs came from the 7th call district.
Most worked DX (excluding 49 VEs of various flavors) was JA (47), PY(21),EA(21)
F(20), LU(20) and DL (15). Eu totals would have been higher absent the
1500-1800Z QRT I took Sunday.
In every contest I learn a little bit more of how to use N1MM logger. This
time I managed to get .wav files working so I could just hit F1 and have a
canned CQ go out, thus saving my voice a little. Did come across one bug
though. When I worked NP2N it refused to associate it with KP2 (although WP2Z
& KP2A had worked fine earlier ) and wouldn't let me plug in a serial number
for an exchange. (I saw a similar comment elsewhere). Ended up punching it in
as KP2N so it would accept a serial number and then editing it after the fact to
change the callsign back to NP2N. Fortunately I already had a couple KP2's in
the log at that point so I already had the mult. Somebody probably just forgot
to associate NP2 with USVI along with KP2 and WP2.
Split my time between CQing and S&P. Best run hour was 1814-1913 Z Saturday at
125/hr.
Not like the "big guns" but gratifying nonetheless.
In the K/VE multiplier department I missed Nebraska, District of Columbia,
Alabama, Arizona(?!), Labrador, Manitoba, Newfoundland, Nunavut and the Yukon.
Didn't work a single XE.
Some highlights:
Got called by ZK2V during one of my CQ runs. Almost didn't believe it as at
first I thought it was too early for propagation from the south Pacific but I
was happily mistaken.
Getting called by 9J2BO from Zambia was a pleasant surprise as well.
Around 1925Z Sunday I heard a weak station that at first I though was a TI6 and
thus swung the beam SE, but in so doing he disappeared. Swinging the beam back
around again though I got the call right as it swung to the northeast. It was
EI6JK. Typically 1900Z+ is way too late even for western Europe, but we made
the QSO.
It was great picking up 6 new multipliers in the last 90 minutes of the
contest.
N0UU provided Kansas with K4PZC yielding up the surprising hard to find (from
here at any rate) state of Virgina in the 30 minutes leading up to 2300Z
Sunday. In an S&P break shortly after 2300Z I was lucky enough to stumble
across VE8GER for the NWT mult. With 20 minutes left to go I was scanning the
band and heard NX0X work a running station and give his state as Minnesota,
another one I lacked. I called him "The Minnesota station, WORK ME!" and we
QSY'ed up a couple and was able to check off another one. Bagged 9M6YBG 11
minutes prior to the closing bell after having heard him the evening before but
at that time had been unable to break the pileup. With about 8 minutes to go I
went back to one final frantic CQ run picking a number of JAs and at 2358 WY7SS
called in to add Wyoming as the final mult worked. A great sprint to the finish
line it was!
73,
Victor -WB0TEV
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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