CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2020
Call: NN7CW
Operator(s): NN7CW
Station: NN7CW
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NFL
Operating Time (hrs): 43:05
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 50 9 15
80: 326 18 60
40: 1059 27 72
20: 864 30 79
15: 1108 22 80
10: 90 11 14
------------------------------
Total: 3497 117 320 Total Score = 4,210,058
Club:
Comments:
First serious effort after the hurricane season finally came to an end. Had all
antennas up and the station gear running a day before the contest, which was
unheard-of before. I even managed to install a portable A/C to decouple the
shack from the rest of the house thermally, as well as acoustically, which
pleased the xyl.
After reading K5ZD's "A Sleep Strategy for DX Contests" article
earlier this year I was targeting a 44.5h effort with one three-hour break in
the night from Sa to Su. No bad weather in sight and all food was prepared -
things were looking great!
Day 1: I started running on 40 while checking out 80. Since sunset was not long
before, 80 was still quite noisy, so slow S&P it was while having mediocre
rates around 100 Q/h on 40 for the first two hours. The next seven hours allowed
for ~85 Q/h, followed by the usual abysmal 35Q/h in the last two hours before
sunrise. So far, so unsurprising. When 20 came alive, I was having a blast at
168 Q/h while noticing that 15 was also on it's way to a wide opening - I was
determined to hit it hard once the signals on 15 were loud enough. But instead
it was me who was hit hard because all of a sudden we lost power and that led to
the premature end of my Sa morning grayline ambitions. According to the power
company, some suicidal critter ended its life and it took two hours to get the
neighborhood hooked up again. Luckily, 15m was still hot and 20 was steady
enough to do some 2BSIQ, which yielded rates around 193 Q/h for the next 2.5
hours before the European sunset kicked in and ended the rush on both bands. I
read yesterday that 10 was busy too at times, but I either missed it or it did
not happen down here; due to the usual afternoon sluggishness I had plenty of
time to see if anything was happening but only managed to rake in about 45 Qs
from SA and the Caribbean while maintaining a trickle on 15 and 20.
Day 2: Rinse and repeat, but at a more lukewarm level - or in other words,
same story as the first night minus 20 Q/h for the next eight hours until I
decided to take my planned three-hour break. I was back on the air about an hour
before sunrise and suffered through ten QSOs in one whole hour before 15 came
out of the mud yet again. Three hours of ~145 Q/h while I realized that 20 was
substantially worse; I looked around a little but did not find anyone I hadn't
already worked, so I leaned back and enjoyed the single radio ride. When 15 went
down again it was "musical bands" between 15, 20 and 10. I couldn't
believe that my Q count on 20 was so much worse than what I got on 15, so I sat
on 20 in hope for some miraculous pileup to make up for the delta. Needless to
say, that never happened and I only encountered some occasional stray JA who
seemed to take pity on my lonely calls. I finally pulled the plug and joined the
usual last-minute chaos on 40 to (more than) double my rate from 33 to a
whopping 68 Q/h. I should have gone at least an hour earlier but hindsight is
20/20...
Downs and ups (I hear it's always better to end on a positive note): as usual, I
didn't like the endless droves of zero point US callers who don't care that they
are hurting the competitive participants, especially the Unassisted single op
entrants. Finding multipliers is not easy without a bandmap and part of the
recipe for success is a lot of running at highest-possible rates. Especially in
the first few hours Friday night I continuously had one or two loud W's screwing
with my my runs. Of course, you work that guy and the next thing you know is
that the DX you wanted to work instead moved on - for Pete's sake! One guy I
ignored even sent me an angry email and claimed that he had a late start and
desperately needed me as his zone 5 multiplier; get outta here! If I had a dime
for every W I could have worked I'd be more than halfway set to put up a
category-winning super station in 2021! Anyway, the cheery note shall be that
15m was the bomb and helped me to get a good Q count while 20 added some
interesting countries I don't always get to work. Apart from the obviously
improving conditions, everyone knew that the amount of available mults would be
down significantly while the absolute amount of participants would be up and I
think that is what we got to experience. I can happily report that I reached my
goal of exceeding 4M points, despite the prime time power cut - life is good.
:)
73 y'all and CU in the next one!
Wolf, NN7CW
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