ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, SSB
Call: WB0TEV
Operator(s): WB0TEV
Station: WB0TEV
Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: NTX
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80: 114
40: 268
20: 305
15: 241
10: 108
------------
Total: 1036 Sections = 83 Total Score = 171,976
Club: North Texas Contest Club
Comments:
Gear: 26 year old FT-767, Ancient and somewhat decrepit Dentron MLA-2500 amp,
54 year old op, N1MM logger.
Antennas: Mosley PRO-67B @ 63 ft. 80m dipole at 60 feet & new 40m vertical with
24 slightly elevated radials which when used QRO on 40m SSB makes neighbor's
computer speakers go "quack-quack"! or so I was informed :-)
Made the sweep and broke 1k Q's so shouldn't complain, but will anyway! Made a
number of strategic errors. I've been ramping up my level of effort in
Sweepstakes the last few years and decided to go "all in" for 2012. Last year
I only operated 20 hours, as I had to take a couple hours off that Saturday
night to entertain dinner guests and took time off Sunday AM to go to church.
This year I put in a full 24 hours by skipping church. When the smoke cleared
Sunday night I had 1036 QSOs in the log. I couldn't remember how that compared
to last year so I immediately looked up the data from 2011 and found that my QSO
count then was..... oh no,.... 1035! For all that extra effort I'd managed to
garner 1 more QSO. Next year I'm going back to church!
Looking over my log I'm convinced one mistake I made was neglecting 15m. I had
some great runs there last year, but this year I spent too much time wandering
the wastelands of other bands, doing S&P when I should have been running. Last
year I had 492 Q's on 15m and had a terrific Sunday afternoon run there. This
year I spent a lot of that time on 20m despite knowing that my station is lot
louder and more competitive on 15m than it ever will be on 20m. Perhaps the
novelty of actually having a good run on 20m kept me there longer than I should
have and I know I went to 40m too early Saturday night before I had enough
propagation on that band. While I did 33 band changes in 2011, this year I
made 40 and that was probably too many.
The good news is that when I knocked off at 0800Z I was only lacking 2
sections, PR and ONE. I was up and back on the air at 1400Z (took my off time
in one 6 hour chunk) and caught a spot for NP4G working him on 15m at 1421Z
followed by the elusive ONE in the form of VE3KI at 1517Z, on 20m. Ironically,
after working VE3KI I went to 15m, started a run and within an hour worked 3
more from ONE. They sure were rare Saturday night though. I think they all
must have been QRT Sat evening before reappearing Sunday. Ultimately I worked
6 of them.
With the exception of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands sections, I worked all
sections at least twice. Most frequently worked sections from here in NTX were
VA and MDC as is typical. Some of the formerly rarer sections weren't so
tough. Made 8 Q's with SC (why is that state so rare anyway?) 7 Q's with RI, 7
with NNY (the one section I couldn't find in the CW SS), 7 with AK, 7 WY, 5
from ND, and 4 from SD and MS.
Maybe someone can explain a mystery to me on the rarity of certain sections. I
remember years ago when the top scores in SS would come from KP4. Some super
stations down there ideally situated for propagation into the US would just
blast away for hours, so finding one was never that hard. VE8/VY1 on the other
hand was quite scarce and finding and working one of them was seemingly limited
to just a few of the lucky/deserving. Now however, for the past several years,
KP4 has been one of the last ones to get worked, usually on Sunday with hardly
much of an appearance on Saturday at all. Meanwhile, thanks to folks like
VY1EI, VE8EV and VE8GER, the NT section is for many easier to conjure up than
South Carolina. Times change.
All in all, I had a blast. Utilized more of the features in N1MM as I learned
about them. I loaded up some .wav files into it for the DVK macros which I
used more and more later in the contest to help save the voice. Being an
ex-DJ/ radio announcer helps, but even the voice of this loud mouthed Texan
started to loose something after that long slog. Had a fairly stout headache
at the end, listening to hours of screeching QRM is enough to make your ears
bleed, but as they say, it hurt so good!
Victor, WB0TEV
Greenville, Texas
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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