20M HP
W0UN (W0UA, op) 775,008 1686 4784 38 124
Interesting to note the differences in propagation on
the various bands. The SE had problems with Europe
on 80M and said the midwest had the opening.
Speaking with K0RF, who did a single 80, the conditions
in Colorado were very poor on 80M with the second
night being the worst. He commented about a one
way wall both to Europe and JA at various times when
the DX was strong here but would CQ in his face.
Not very typical for his 3L 80M beam on a monolith
of a hill.
K8DX had a very fine 20M score and said that Saturday
was good but Sunday was not so hot. Just the opposite
out here. This was the first attempt at doing 20M CW
from my station and Saturday was pretty marginal and
Sunday was much better than typical for the second
day of a contest. We usually do about 2/3 of the qsos
on the first day and 1/3 on the second day. This time it
was about 1/2 and 1/2.
What we always need is for Europe to be good
out here and this time over 66% of the QSOs were
Europeans. Running JAs is still a significant part of
any contest effort from out west but you can't win with
JAs.
The antenna array is a stack of TH7s that have been
1/4 wave stub matched on 15M not 20M (the broadband
matching box didn't get finished in time and I had
single-band matched them on 15M and the WX was
too poor to climb the tower and change out the matching
stubs!). So built up a quickie Tee network tuner on
Thanksgiving and matched the impedance in the shack.
All pretty hokey even for a typical last minute kluge
but it worked well enough to break the old Tenth Call
area record of 425K. Actually W0UA's 775K score from
here blew the old record away! Looked throught the 97 CQ
Almanac and noted the 775K exceeds the previous
records in all of the USA call areas except 1, 2, and 8.
Obviously I am quite pleased with George's efforts from
a station not quite ready for prime time--ie, using tribanders
when I have at least 24 elements of various 20M
monobanders laying around waiting to get installed
somewhere.
Just wish K8DX had gotten his other antennas
going in time to do an all band effort instead of doing
a single 20M and having a bigger single 20M score than
ours.
FB OM!
73 John W0UN
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