CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: WX0B
Operator(s): AD5Q
Station: WX0B
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Dallas
Operating Time (hrs): 44:14
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 30 10 15
80: 211 19 61
40: 730 35 99
20: 778 35 104
15: 398 30 89
10: 79 14 30
------------------------------
Total: 2226 143 398 Total Score = 3,084,241
Club: DFW Contest Group
Comments:
A lot of this contest was not a surprise. I've done sunspot bottoms before and
know when the openings are. What's changed is that most of the antennas here
have been upgraded, and I have somewhat more experience. The station is very
automated. Conditions weren't too good.
At the start of the contest the high bands were open out west and south,
including 10. I found good rate on 20 running JA's, and had 26 SO2R mults
logged on 15/10. At 0120z the run radio stopped working on both transmit and
receive. After a half hour of down time I got back into the contest, thinking I
would compete in a different category without SO2R (single band or classic).
Since these categories involve less op time, I abandoned thoughts of competing
altogether. I love this contest, and would do the whole contest the old way -
unassisted without SO2R. This involves the classic trade-off between running
and pouncing, where we must take time out of our runs in order to TUNE for
mults (and wait for everybody to id before calling them).
The Click and Pounce mob doesn't have to wait, and faithfully adheres to a
tradition of dumping their callsigns on pileup frequencies when the DX finally
does id (right after the "TU"). So the S&P rate of an unassisted
op is inherently slower. We also need to id the calls of all the dupes as we
tune, where everyone else has them filtered by their software as if they didn't
even exist. When everybody in the pileup already knows the callsign (from the
cluster or RBN), there is less need for the DX to id very often. To me, the
appeal of the unassisted category is that it offers a refuge from obnoxious
pileup behavior which has become the norm. As we tune the bands, these pileups
are the exception (and often a waste of valuable time).
I pretty much nailed all the opportunities to run with good rate, but with a
couple mistakes. I knew that the 15m EU opening would be brief, and occur
DURING the good rate on 20. I also knew that if EU opened on 10, it would be
DURING the opening on 15. I've never been able to get this part right, and it
has always shown in my 10m mult total. So I ran for an hour on 20, then left it
for 15 and ran for a bit - but I also pounced 15 for mults. Next I went to 10
and worked every mult I heard (mistake). The closest I got to EU was zone 33,
and nearly all these mults were available all weekend. When I returned to 15
there was nothing left to run except Spain. I corrected this problem the 2nd
day by not going to 10, but the rate on 15 started to fizzle as soon as it got
going (and before I had pounced the opening for mults). I started the pounce
pass and everything was zone 14 (zone 15 was already gone). So I went back to
20 where there would be more EU's left to run at better rate.
My original plan for these openings was my new interleaving scripts for
"Dueling ESM". CT1BOH (at CR3OO) is also set up this way, and I'm
sure his LUA functionality is nearly identical. If you've seen the ZF2MJ video,
we can do the same thing with one computer, keyboard and monitor - and no
additional SO2R hardware. The plan was to capture the high rate on 15 without
leaving the big run on 20, then troll for EU mults on 10 by CQing without
leaving my run on 15. This requires 2 radios, and since one failed I couldn't
try this. Next year.
Conditions on the low bands were poor. On my first solo effort from WX0B (ARRL
CW 2004) low band conditions were phenomenal and 40 EU was a bottomless pit. In
the following CQWW (2004) I was banging my head on the desk because I couldn't
run the EU sunrise. And so it went throughout the last sunspot minimum. At EU
sunrise, the MUF across the north Atlantic is at its lowest for the 24 hour day
- and if it's below 7 MHz there is no EU run. EU callers are weak, and require
effort and time to dig out of the noise - and the copyable callers are all zero
pointers. Need to do something else instead of CQing on 40. Pounce 40, run EU on
80, and work 160. In this contest there was more going on than just the low MUF.
The K index was 3 or 4 all weekend and none of the usual strategies worked very
well. JA was good on 40 & 80, but at the end of the first night I hadn't
worked the following easy EU mults on any band: OK, OM, SP, PA, OE, LY, LZ, YO.
Much of the DX was southeast. On the 2nd night conditions seemed better, but
with less activity. The EU's on 80 didn't CQ in my face and I got them in the
log, but still no EU runs on either 40 or 80 at their sunrise. On 160 I
carefully monitored the entire sunrise across zones 14 & 15, and heard not
one copyable signal from there. There was ONE zone 14 pileup that was
obliterated by packeteers, and I never got the callsign.
So I was SO1R this time, and S&P for 26.9 hours at a rate of only 27.4.
When the public logs are posted I will be computing everybody's rates. My mult
total includes a contact with P5AB. I don't know who that was, or how many
others worked him. All that is up to the log checkers.
Roy -- AD5Q
Aspie Ducky Five Quack
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