Long winded yarn follows. Delete now if easily bored.
Goal this contest was to break the 1,000 QSO mark. The best I had ever done in
a contest before was around 300. Contesting originally was a means to an end
for me - to add to my DXCC count. Now that after 3 years back in the hobby I'm
up to around 240, contests are far less of a way to add to the count and more
of a pleasure in themselves.
Contest station is at the lake house we'll be moving to after we sell current
house. Wife didn't come, so I had the whole place to myself and could blast
the speaker all night and not wear headphones. Only thing is that I had to
quit around 4 hours early so that I could get home in time for dinner on Sunday.
Took Friday off from work and got the boat out of the water and off to the
marina for service. Did some antenna tweaking and took a nap late in the
afternoon and got up around 7PM EDT. Should mention that the antenna here is
not optimal - a ground mounted HF6V. An AL-1500 amplifier helps, but not with
hearing. Regardless, this is a pretty good omnidirectional antenna on 20 and
40m. On 15m, not so much and 10m I had little idea until this weekend.
Stayed up until 4:30AM on Friday night hoping to catch a mess of VK's, ZL's and
JA's on 40m like I usually do. Nothing. From the spotter program, it looks
like they were enjoying the 10m propagation with EU instead. Must have worked
EVERY contester in CA, WA and OR, though. Went to sleep and got up around
9:30.
Running was very productive on Saturday, producing rates of 90 or more QSO's
per hour at times. I had a run of 50 QSO's where I never called CQ once, often
having 2 or 3 stations calling me at once as the prior QSO ended. Learned a
trick I'm sure many of the more experienced contesters knew. Instead of being
quick with the AGN? macro, I'd just wait until someone called again. That
usually resulted in a decoded callsign.
10m and 15m were hopping. I had experienced an active 15m band before during a
CQ WW SSB contest in 2009, but never 10m. I had about 4 times more 10m QSO's
just from this contest alone by midday on Saturday than I had in my entire log
since 2008. Worked a few ZL, VK and JA's late in the afternoon (their
sunrise), but not nearly as many as I'm accustomed to. Maybe the solar flares
had something to do with that?
Had a total of 750 QSO's logged and figured I would easily reach my goal of
1000 early Sunday. Went to bed early (10PM is very early for me) on Saturday
figuring I'd get up just before sunrise and work the propagation then. Often
the LP on the high bands to Asia is open then. The only thing I heard from
that part of the world was VU2LBW, I think, calling CQ on 15 with no takers.
He was 100% copyable with almost no fading. I called for 15 minutes and got no
response. Even with 1500 watts, a no gain omnidirectional antenna sitting on
the ground is not the equipment for that band.
The day started badly. Running was not nearly as productive as it had been the
prior day. It didn't help that at 1PM, I started running SO2M - single
operator, 2 media - with the addition of a TV tuned to the Giants-Philly game
in the shack. S&P is very slow for my tastes and it took me most of the game -
3 hours - to accumulate the remaining 120 QSO's I needed by then to reach 1000.
I think I started on 20m, worked through the activity, went to 15, did the
same, and finished on 10m. By then it was 4PM and I had a half hour before
getting ready to leave. Ran on 15m for 20 minutes and added 44 more QSO's,
again without calling CQ more than 2 or 3 times.
Kept looking all weekend long at 4W6A spots. Didn't care about the mode. Never
heard them once! Solar flux at 190 and I hear NOTHING from that part of the
world. Another opportunity gone!
Discovered the ESM functionality in N1MM. Boy, did that make me more
productive and less error prone and tired! Next time, I'll get LOGTHENGRAB
working!
The AL-1500 was powered up Friday evening and wasn't shut down until I left at
5 PM on Sunday. I usually operated it with 1300-1400 watts out and often for 2
hours at a time calling without a break. It ran flawlessly. The Chinese 8877
hasn't failed me yet!
The HF6V antenna has a very narrow bandwidth on 80m. I don't have my
wintertime 80m dipole up yet. I had taken the analyzer out to the antenna
Friday afternoon for soem tweaking but apparently didn't pay enough attention
to the 80m tuning. Resonance was just over 3.6 mHz instead of closer to 3.55
as I was aiming for. I didn't like that I had to use a tuner nor the way the
SWR meter was swinging around as I applied power so I stayed off 80m altogether.
All in all, I hade a great time!
Al
AB2ZY
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY
Call: AB2ZY
Operator(s): AB2ZY
Station: AB2ZY
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Caroga Lake, NY
Operating Time (hrs): 28
Summary:
Band QSOs Pts State/Prov DX Zones
------------------------------------------
80:
40: 221 489 33 44 14
20: 303 617 43 50 19
15: 301 778 24 58 18
10: 219 571 13 36 14
------------------------------------------
Total: 1044 2455 113 188 65 Total Score = 898,530
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