CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: W3EF
Operator(s): W3EF
Station: W3EF
Class: SOAB LP
QTH: Maryland
Operating Time (hrs): 43.5
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 23 8 12
80: 130 14 59
40: 873 30 90
20: 501 31 92
15: 537 31 98
10: 755 28 94
------------------------------
Total: 2819 142 445 Total Score = 4,777,593
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
This may look like an excellent score �" more or less a repeat of the
USA
SOABLP record I set in 2011. In truth, it was my best attempt to recover from
the unrecoverable �" missing the first 2 hours and 45 minutes of the
contest! (See below.) Given conditions were pretty good, I seriously doubt
it will be excellent enough. But whoever you are, please beat me by at least
300,000 points �" the value of the missing contacts based on those
first
few hours in 2011 (not counting multipliers). If not, you will have the record
but not the moral victory, and I may well turn into one of those doddering old
men who mumbles on for the rest of his life in garbled obscenities and obscure
recriminations that no one can understand.
Believe me, I didn’t leave it to chance to be at the radio for the biggest
contest of my life�"defending that record for what may be the only
time
it ever comes under serious threat, given that in another 11 years contesting
participation may well be on the way out like the rest of amateur radio
(although we have been wrong about this before). But my longstanding
“favourite airline”’s incompetence over some 28 hours blew both the
original plan �" return to Washington from Frankfurt on Thursday,
which
died at the Heathrow transfer desk as a result of 4 separate delays on the
first flight leg �" and then, separately, the backup, which was to
take
the Friday morning flight from London, arriving at 19:30z. That one was nearly
all boarded (I was on the last shuttle bus to the plane) when they called a
3-hour delay for engineering repairs. Still might have been OK, but it was
like seeing a slow-motion car crash unfold, watching that delay extend to four,
and then five, and then six hours. When I finally got some help from the
airline’s special services rep (I once calculated I spend 7% of my total time
on their flights; you’d think they would look after me), she advised me to
take the 17:00z flight (the one they could have rushed me to the previous day,
but refused), since my current one seemed to be on permanent delay. So I
changed…and then the delayed flight ended up taking off 45 minutes before the
new one, which experienced its own delay. End result: furious, frustrated, and
foaming at the mouth, I loaded N1MM, turned on the radios, and started making
contacts at 02:45z.
So welcome to my nightmare. I apologize for the travel story. Everybody has
one, or more, and I know I for one hate listening to them. It’s just that
when you are focusing on something for months�"-years, even--and you
see
it evaporating before your eyes, it hurts. My only hope was that conditions
would not be as great as many had predicted�"-selfish, I know. As it
turned out, that was another hope dashed.
OK, end of rant. The stuff I have control over, like the station, I can cope
with. The 15m stack went bad sometime in the past two weeks, and I couldn’t
fix it in the 10 minutes I allowed myself to look at it on Saturday, but I had
a backup (the tribander I usually use for south contacts) and it worked OK.
Managed without the dead beverages (all of them) and missing half the elevated
radials on 80 and 160 (Friday morning was to have been spent fixing these).
But the station worked pretty well on all the bands, as the stats show.
Lots of fabulous DX in this contest (the kind that usually only calls me in
WPX, where points-wise it’s no different from less juicy stuff). It was
great to work all over the world on 10 through 40. I only missed 4 zones: 22
and 23 (both heard but not worked) and 28 and 39 (both on the air as announced
expeditions, but I never heard ‘em). The most exciting stuff for me was
3DA0ET on 10-20, TX8B on 10 and 20, N8A on 40, E2E on 20, and Z81X on 15 (among
others). 6-banders included 6Y7W, D4C, and PJ2T.
Less exciting was the realization that I was not going to get any sleep during
this contest if I wanted to be in with even the slightest chance. In the end I
did catch one 90-minute cycle at 0720z on Sunday, since activity was well down
from the previous night (the HF opening to EU Sunday morning was shorter as
well). The rest of the time was heavy-duty SO2R, continuing to improve the
operating technique that is the only real non-copyable ingredient to my (albeit
limited) success. Once I started, I had to give it my all, and I did. I know
many others did, as well, and I congratulate each of them�"-no matter
what the outcome.
Thanks as always to K5ZD and the team �" you run the pre-eminent
contest
in a most professional manner and continue to improve it. Nice work!
73 and thanks for all the Qs �" and for reading!
Maury W3EF
Hour Total 1_8 3_5 7 14
21 28 Running Total
0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0
1 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0
2 19 0 0 18 1 0
0 19
3 54 0 6 45 3 0
0 73
4 69 9 16 44 0 0
0 142
5 51 0 11 40 0 0
0 193
6 65 2 18 44 1 0
0 258
7 72 3 7 62 0 0
0 330
8 60 1 6 39 14 0
0 390
9 17 1 2 8 6 0
0 407
10 18 0 7 6 5 0
0 425
11 52 0 0 1 46 4
1 477
12 111 0 0 0 20
61 30 588
13 137 0 0 0 0
27 110 725
14 122 0 0 0 0
15 107 847
15 114 0 0 0 4
13 97 961
16 74 0 0 0 19
29 26 1035
17 96 0 0 0 0
73 23 1131
18 85 0 0 0 1
60 24 1216
19 54 0 0 0 37
17 0 1270
20 53 0 0 0 35
13 5 1323
21 83 0 0 54 22 6
1 1406
22 64 0 0 45 4 4
11 1470
23 77 0 0 63 0
14 0 1547
0 76 0 0 58 17 1
0 1623
1 47 0 7 29 11 0
0 1670
2 24 0 7 17 0 0
0 1694
3 29 4 12 13 0 0
0 1723
4 59 0 9 47 3 0
0 1782
5 56 3 9 44 0 0
0 1838
6 39 0 0 36 3 0
0 1877
7 15 0 1 14 0 0
0 1892
8 1 0 0 1 0 0
0 1893
9 38 0 0 33 5 0
0 1931
10 10 0 1 9 0 0
0 1941
11 79 0 1 0 70 8
0 2020
12 91 0 0 0 41
26 24 2111
13 98 0 0 0 16 0
82 2209
14 109 0 0 0 14 1
94 2318
15 84 0 0 0 0
17 67 2402
16 85 0 0 0 0
60 25 2487
17 70 0 0 0 3
57 10 2557
18 52 0 0 0 39 7
6 2609
19 45 0 0 0 30 9
6 2654
20 30 0 0 10 14 1
5 2684
21 49 0 0 40 5 3
1 2733
22 46 0 0 24 11
11 0 2779
23 40 0 10 29 1 0
0 2819
All 2819 23 130 873 501
537 755 2819
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