CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: KQ2M
Operator(s): KQ2M
Station: KQ2M
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs): 33
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160:
80: 159 17 50
40: 478 28 90
20: 719 37 113
15: 940 37 107
10: 1295 29 101
------------------------------
Total: 3593 150 463 Total Score = 6,417,497
Club: Frankford Radio Club
Comments:
The infamous October CQWW SSB blizzard which dumped
20" of wet, heavy snow at my qth, caused significant damage to
my antennas, rotators and other equipment. Most of my wire antennas
were destroyed by the broken branches and trees that fell on them.
I was a bit demoralized by the 2nd devastating storm in 2 months
and was still catching up with work and the crazed financial markets,
so I did not have much time to fix things up. The antenna lineup
was to be an 80 meter inv L, a 40 meter wire 4-square and remnants of
a 40 meter wire beam that was still hanging at odd angles in the trees.
20 meters was a stack fixed NE @ 82' and 58' without a rotatable antenna!
15 meters was a rotatable stack @ 109' and 90' with the 60' pinned
against the tower SW.
10 meters, the only healthy band had a top @ 100'and bottom @ 37'
that were rotatable with the 65' fixed NE.
Without any good lowband antennas, and feeling very tired from the
80 hour+ work weeks, I decided to briefly play on 20, see what I could
work with an antenna fixed NE and then try 40 to see if I could run
anything before going to sleep and getting up early to run EU on the
high bands.
Since one of my old DOS computers had died in the power spikes during
the storm in the CQWWSSB, I had spent all Friday afternoon configuring
a computer running Windows 3 (yes, you read that correctly :-) so that
I could run trusty CT DOS ver 9.65 on 2 computers and hopefully network them
for a primitive SO2R. Well, 3 hours later I was still struggling with
harddrive and software issues, but I was persistent and figured out a
way to edit the path statement, autoexec and other .bat files, and then
transfer hundreds of files with laplink 5 and then network the computers.
I was excited, when at 2330z, it appeared to work. I had not operated
SO2R in 5 years, but was going to give it a shot for CQWWCW, even though
I was barefoot on the 2nd radio and had no inter-radio filtering.
I went upstairs and ate dinner, set up downstairs and was ready. Or so
I thought.
I started s & p on 20, picking up ZD8W, BY1CW, EL2A, C91NW, 9G5MP, VK9LW
and a very loud JT5DX, followed by VR2UW and 9M2TO. There were lots of
weaker stations that were mults but I couldn't copy them well enough much
less crack the pileups. It was extremely difficult to work the Eastern
African stations with an antenna fixed NE and the SA/CA pileups were almost
impossible.
40 was a deafening madhouse of loud stations. Since I was puny weak,
I decided to reverse s & p on 40, starting at the high end and working
my way down. I was blown away by how loud VU2PAI was on 7080! and
slowly worked my way down the band at a surprising 2-3 q's per minute!
The activity was so intensely packed up and down the band that the pileups
were not too bad and I heard lots of interesting things. At 0200z I
found the US M/M's at the bottom of the band so I started back up in
reverse s & p mode and this time found 9L0W, ST2AR, a very loud RD0A,
8Q7DV, 5H3EE, 3V8SS and so much more. It was just incredible what was on 40!
To illustrate my point, with a simple wire 4-square, I just had a 101
hour s & p on 40 in the 01z hour!
With the activity clearly shifting from 15 and 20 down to 40, I decided it
was time to go back to 20 to see what I could work to the South with my
antenna fixed NE. Sure enough the pileups were small and I was able to
work most of the SA/CA stations now, including 6V7V, ES9C, UA0QBR,
RZ0SZZ and JH4UYB.
I couldn't work much so I went quickly to 80, where I ran a few stations
then nothing. I decided to try my luck high in the band on 40, so I picked a
clear spot @ 7081 and called cq and my run started. My 3rd q was 4L1MA @
0320z
followed by ZA1G @ 0325z and then a variety of Eu with lots of Russians mixed
in. Since the rate was slow, I decided to try SO2R on 20. It felt strange
after so many years of 1 radio operating and it was a bit overwhelming at
first, but like riding a bicycle, once you learn properly, you never
completely
forget how.
It was remarkable how many Carib/African mults I could pick up on 20 using
an antenna pointed NE and operating BAREFOOT! Pretty cool! I was feeling
good until I actually tried to log them on the 2nd computer. UH OH!
Not only was there a delay, but the 1st computer did not like when the
2nd computer was talking to it. It refused to log anything that the 2nd
computer logged. Then it would freeze up with the dreaded "Received Bad
Checksum" message. This got much worse. So much for 2 radio operation. The
audio wasn't very good either with the makeshift setup I was using. Still, I
was persistent and realized that if I changed the band on the 1st computer to
the correct band of the 2nd radio and then logged the 2nd radio qso, that would
work. Then I would immediately have to change the band back on the 1st computer
before logging a qso from my "walk" frequency. This was a very inefficient way
to try to operate, but was the best that I could do. At 0415z I packed it in.
I knew cndx were good, but not as good as CQWW SSB and without gain antennas, I
was better off getting much needed sleep.
At 10z I was up and listening around. 20 was trying to open to EU but not
having the 130' antenna was painful. With an antenna @ 130' the band was open,
but antenna @ 82'and the band was not open. Oh well. Back to 40 for some
quality mult time. NH2T was loud and workable on 40 as were some other SA/CA
mults. Very little in Asia though until 1044z when I worked RU0FM and B4R @
1047z. The JA's were multipath and very difficult to copy so no point in
trying to work them. KL7RA couldn't hear me on 40
but they did on 80 when I went there to pick up some needed mults.
At 1108z I moved to 20 where it was now open to EU for the 82' antenna. The
run was decent but nothing special as I was probably about 2 s-units weaker
than normal and 1/2 of EU was probably already on 15 and 10. At 1150z I made
the jump to 15 and the rate soared.
Still, 15 was not so hot and I knew that 10 was the place to be, so after only
20 minutes on 15 I moved to 10, and WOW! Instant pileup with lots of
Russians.
If you live in New England, you know that the great rate hours are all about
working lots of Russians and Eastern Eu stations. You can have an excellent
hour working EU, but you can't have a great hour without working lots of
Russians!
The 12z, 13z and 14z hours were simply AMAZING! Rates of 206, 210 and 201!
Three 200+ hours in a row! Before now, I never had more than ONE 200+ hour on
CW from Stateside in any contest, and now I just had THREE IN A ROW on 10 !!!
Putting the exclamation point on the run was my best stateside run hour ever @
222 !! from 1218-1317z. Along the way I had a SEVEN qso minute, my first ever
from Stateside, with SIX 6-qso-minutes! At one point the last 10/100 rate was
305.1 / 231.2 ! with a peak last 10 minute rate of 252!!
During this thrilling **3-hour** blur of rate, not much in the way of juicy
mults called in except A71CV @ 1328z. As the late-morning absorption set in,
the rate fell to 140 in the 15z hour and dropped further until a qsy to 15 @
1632z, where the rate stayed in the 140+ range. As the pileup thinned (even
though I had not worked many on 15), I began to use the 2nd radio to pick off
the mults on 10, no easy task barefoot! and then qsy'd to 20 @ 1809z where I
was "fresh meat". It was still a rate/multfest with 140 in the 15z hour,
150 and 143 in the 16z and 17z hours on 15 followed by 168 and 170 hours @ 18z
and 19z on 20 with the last 10/ last 100 meter getting back up to 274.8 /
196.7! @ 1939z.
The rates were simply incredible even if cndx were not all that great. I had
not really worked that many mults so VU2BGS was a welcome double mult @ 1941z.
I could feel 20 going away early in the 20z hour and without the high antenna,
there was little else to do. 40 was coming alive but without a gain antenna
there, the only that made sense was to turn the 10 & 15 meter antennas in
different directions and s & p as many mults as possible which was what I did @
2019z as I abandoned 20.
This was a fruitful strategy and 20z produced 85 q's with 53 mults! followed by
55 q's with 25 mults in the 21z hour. Cndx were not very good on 10 and 15 was
only marginally better as the auroral oval spiked up at precisely the wrong
time to work Asia. It was a battle to get ZD8W, C91NW, ZD8N, Ua0ZAM, JA3YBK
and AH0BT in the log. 10 was useless and 40 was where the action was.
I moved high up in the band on 40 and began another "walk" @ 2143z. I had a
very good freq. but I simply wasn't loud enough to attract much attention. At
2230z I moved to 10 and picked up UA0ZAM, 2 JA's, AH2R, NH2T (very loud!) and
then to 15 which sounded better. I fought through the 9M8/AI6V pileup for a
double-mult and moved to 20 where I found a loud YE1ZAW @ 2317z and B3C @
14028. A few more mults and q's and then to 80 @ 2337z for a very brief run.
I had another good freq. but I just wasn't loud enough to make it work. I went
high in the band on 40 @ 2359 for a brief run and back to 80
then to 20 for a for some KH6's and double mult.
I took a break (one of the advantages of not operating competitively) and then
tried 40 again @ 0145z for a brief 20 minute run with 4Z8SM and Z32ZM calling
in. Back to 80 for some s & p at 02z and then another 10 min run on 80. Some
more s & p after that where I finally got the attention of 4L5O after 5 minutes
of calling. A few more mults and then anothe 5 min run, back to 20 for some
African mults, 40 for A45XR and A71EM and then another run try high in the band
on 80 @ 0308z for 20 minutes. I was just too weak on 40 and 80 so it was 20 or
bust. I found 5R8IC @ 0333 for a double mult and
then UP5P and ZM1A. ZM1A was incredibly hard to work off the back of the
antenna!
Before going to bed I was able to work VE3MGY and K1LZ for double mults on 160
with the 80 M antenna barefoot. I had to call quite a few times though!
Up at 10z to work the Pacific on 40 and 80 with some SA/CA but not strong
enough to work the JA's on 80. Lots of juicy mults on 40 from Asia but I was
about 2-3 s-units to weak for the YB, HS, and others.
At 1106z I was able to start a run on 20, and I was determined to stay there
late expecting the deep Asian mults to call me. But they did not and the run
was rather poor so I qsy'ed to 15 @ 1143z after working CR3L on 10. 15 sounded
good and UA9FAR called in @ 1145z followed by SX1L @ 1156, SV9COL @ 1206 and
UN9L and 4K9W double mult @ 1218/1219z. XV9DX was a great surprise for another
double mult over the pole @ 1223z. 11z produced a 104 hour, but 12z was
exceptional with a plethora of zone 16 q's and a 181 hour!
At 1321z VU2PTT called in for a double-mult and at 1337z I knew I had to go to
10 even though I still had not worked much of Central Asia on 15. 10 was
cranking with lots of zone 16 stations but few mults. I had apparently missed
"the window" on 10 when those z17/z21 mults hear you at their sunset and call
in.
The 15/10 run produced a 167 hour @ 13z followed by 2 more good hours on 10
of 148 and 131 @ 14z and 14z. Along the way 6V7V and HZ1PS called in and with
the rate slowing down it was back to 2 radio operation trying to pick off those
mults on the other band barefoot. 10 continued to produce good rate and mults
every so often with 4Z5LA, 9H1CG and TF3G calling in.
At about 1630z I had a really unpleasant experience with the operator at K4PV.
I had been running for about 2 hours on my freq. when K4PV starts calling cq on
top of me with an s9+20 signal. I nicely asked him to please qsy, once, twice,
three times, etc. but he persisted. Refusing to acknowledge me or move, he
kept up his inane cqing for another 10 minutes before finally going away. I
really do not understand why some view this as acceptable operating procedure.
What's the point of this? At a minimum, the sign of a very poor op.
Occasionally someone (including me) can hit the dial and wind up on the wrong
freq. and cq once or twice, but that is easily rectified
by a "Sri" and a quick qsy. The tipoff is that the person on the freq. asks
you to qsy. And, if you are not sure, you should qsy anyway! But
unfortunately, some others simply do not care and it reflects poorly on them.
The 16z hour finished with 106 q's. I had qsy'ed to 15 @ 1644z and started to
run there after 10 almost died. I noticed that the auroral oval darkened
substantially and spiked up to 8 ! ending my run. 15 was still open and I had
a slow run with lots of SO2R mults and q's on 10 including D2QV, 9J3A, C5A,
ZD8W, CE1CR, OA4DX and lots more.
17z ended with 139 q's and 13 mults followed by 104 q's and 12 mults @ 18z
with 5N7M calling in @ 1841z. The line noise that had plagued me in previous
years was back in full force and making 15 almost impossible to use. It was
even affecting 10 and 20 now.
At 1901z I qsy'd to 20 with some fun SO2R on 15. HZ1PS called in 1907z and I
worked ST2AR on 15. 19z ended with 122 q's and 13 mults.
20z was very interesting as the rate dropped on 20 and I picked off SA/CA on
15. Then the following mults called in on 20: 9Y4W @ 2008z, 9H1XT @ 2023, OA4DX
@ 2032 and Champ, E21EIC @ 2047! I took a brief break as 20 died producing a 62
hour with 9 mults.
At 2110z I started a run on 40 very high in the band, and this time I got some
attention. TC7B called in @ 2121 followed by SV1ENG @ 2124 and YW5T @ 2144. I
picked up SA/CA mults on 20 and VK2IM on 15. The 21z hour ended with 81 q's and
6 mults and I abandoned the 40 meter run to chase mults on 10 and 15 picking up
ZK2V on 10 and NH2T on 15 followed by YE1ZAW @ 2246 while I was slowly running
high in the band on 80.
what was funny was that YE1S had a raging pileup on 15 that I could not break,
so I kept tuning and 5 kc higher, a LOUDER YE1ZAW was being ignored. I could
not let that continue so I called him and worked him on the first call. I
tuned back down and the raging pileup continued for YE1S. :-) The 22z hour
ended with 49 q's but 11 mults.
At 23z, 15 struggled to briefly open to JA for New England but it was short and
not very good. 10 meters had a 5 minute very marginal opening to JA. Very
disappointing! Back to 15 where BY5CD was attracting lots of attention. I
couldn't break the pileup through the W6's so I kept tuning and heard a
solitary BV1EK who I knew would hear me because he had called me before on 15.
Sure enough, I worked him for a double-mult and THEN after the BV1EK pileup
started, I tuned back to BY5CD and worked him easily. :-)
I assumed that BV1EK had been spotted and then many stations abandoned the
BY5CD pileup for a rare mult.
I spent the last 30 minutes with a brief run on 80 and then back to 40 to end
the contest.
The 23z hour was 37 q's and 4 mults.
All in all it was a thrilling contest! I had not planned to operate so much
with the marginal antennas that I had on 3 bands running barefoot on the 2nd
radio, so I was truly astonished to see that in 33 hours operating, I had made
3,593 q's with 150 zones and 463 countries for 6.4 meg!
I was truly amazed that on 20 with a 5L 20 FIXED NE at Europe at 82' I was able
to work 37 zones and 113 countries! I never would have believed that was
possible! It is TOUGH to work Oceania in the null of your antenna, and SA/CA
is off the side in the other null.
Likewise, most of Asia is way off the side as is Southern Africa. It was quite
a fun and interesting operating challenge!
Another operating challenge, and one that I would really like to do without, is
when all of a sudden 5-10 stations call you on the EXACT same freq. at the EXACT
same time! It means that you have been spotted on some cluster or network and
everyone pushes the key to move to your freq. at the same time. It makes
pulling out a callsign almost impossible. PLEASE move to the freq. and then
move the dial up or down 100 - 200 hz before calling so that you ar spread out
a little bit. I will work you faster if you do that. QRP stations have
figured this out a long time ago - a good op will look at the "edges" of the
pileup for easy to copy stations; so be a smart op and DO NOT call on the exact
freq. shown on the cluster/network. Please call a little bit high or low.
Likewise, if I say G3X??, that should NOT be taken as an invitation for a UR7,
IK5 and F4 to call me. Please be patient and I will work you faster.
To the anonymous tuners out there, you are not affecting my rate. Radio
receivers are wonderful nowadays with all the ways to filter you out. All it
takes is about 5 seconds to make you go away and continue the great rates. I'm
enjoying running people while you are sitting there tuning. It is pretty silly
to waste your time like that when you could actually be working people. Next
time, Why not try participating and having fun?
Each contest I try some new ideas and strategies and with missing antennas,
broken rotators and barefoot on the 2nd radio, there was a compelling necessity
to try new things. I did figure out some effective new strategies for next
year, and with (hopefully) a full complement of antennas as the correct
heights, it should be a lot more fun.
I was pleased to see that my health has improved to the point where I can
probably operate 40 hours and much of that with SO2R, so I plan to start the
next phase of station rebuilding, even if it is with very old technology and
manual antenna switching. :-)
It was great to see the incredible qso/mult totals and scores from all over the
US and many parts of the world. It seemed incredible to me that I never heard
several stations that I knew were active,like CN2R. The growth of EU activity
is simply amazing from one cycle to the next and seeing the increase in cw
activity from South and Central America and now China, is very exciting indeed!
Thanks to all for a great weekend of fun and dxing. Special thanks to all
those stations that traveled far and wide to be DX and give us a multiplier!
73 and happy holidays and Happy New Year!
Bob KQ2M
kq2m@kq2m.com
www.rlsfinancialgroup.com
www.kq2m.com
Some statistics from the contest:
Best:
10 min. 42 q's 252 rate
20 min. 78 234
30 min. 114 228
60 min. 222 222
120 min. 435 218
Qso's/minute
7/min 1 WOW!
6/min 6 WOW!
5/min 45 !!!
4/min 213 !!!
3/min 389 !
2/min 449 !
BREAKDOWN QSO/mults KQ2M CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST Single Operator
HOUR 160 80 40 20 15 10 HR TOT CUM TOT
0 ..... 7/8 1/2 36/51 ..... ..... 44/61 44/61
1 . . 101/64 . . . 101/64 145/125
2 . 3/3 21/15 13/10 . . 37/28 182/153
3 . . 57/5 5/4 . . 62/9 244/162
4 . 10/5 16/0 1/1 . . 27/6 271/168
5 . . . . . . . 271/168
6 . . . . . . . 271/168
7 . . . . . . . 271/168
8 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 271/168
9 . . . . . . . 271/168
10 . 6/9 22/17 1/1 . . 29/27 300/195
11 . 2/3 . 57/21 26/19 . 85/43 385/238
12 . . . . 11/2 195/35 206/37 591/275
13 . . . . . 210/12 210/12 801/287
14 . . . . . 201/10 201/10 1002/297
15 . . . . . 140/6 140/6 1142/303
16 ..... ..... ..... ..... 77/12 73/2 150/14 1292/317
17 . . . . 139/7 4/6 143/13 1435/330
18 . . . 152/19 16/4 . 168/23 1603/353
19 . . . 170/9 . . 170/9 1773/362
20 . . . 37/1 19/28 29/24 85/53 1858/415
21 . . 31/1 1/0 23/24 . 55/25 1913/440
22 . . 62/3 . 3/2 5/5 70/10 1983/450
23 . 20/10 4/0 13/7 2/0 . 39/17 2022/467
0 ..... 6/1 18/0 2/2 ..... ..... 26/3 2048/470
1 . . 18/2 . . . 18/2 2066/472
2 . 39/16 4/0 4/4 . . 47/20 2113/492
3 2/4 28/3 2/2 3/3 . . 35/12 2148/504
4 . . . . . . . 2148/504
5 . . . . . . . 2148/504
6 . . . . . . . 2148/504
7 . . . . . . . 2148/504
8 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 2148/504
9 . . . . . . . 2148/504
10 . 8/6 5/3 . . . 13/9 2161/513
11 . . . 42/0 61/4 1/2 104/6 2265/519
12 . . . . 181/10 . 181/10 2446/529
13 . . . . 93/2 74/2 167/4 2613/533
14 . . . . . 148/2 148/2 2761/535
15 . . . . 6/7 125/1 131/8 2892/543
16 ..... ..... ..... ..... 40/0 66/2 106/2 2998/545
17 . . . . 123/0 16/13 139/13 3137/558
18 . . . . 97/5 7/7 104/12 3241/570
19 . . . 114/6 8/7 . 122/13 3363/583
20 . . . 59/5 3/4 . 62/9 3425/592
21 . . 75/3 6/3 . . 81/6 3506/598
22 . 23/3 19/1 3/3 3/3 1/1 49/11 3555/609
23 . 7/0 21/0 . 9/4 . 37/4 3592/613
DAY1 ..... 48/38 315/107 486/124 316/98 857/100 ..... 2022/467
DAY2 2/4 111/29 162/11 233/26 624/46 438/30 . 1570/146
TOT 2/4 159/67 477/118 719/150 940/144 1295/130 . 3592/613
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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