Results – 2008 West Coast Regional Radio Team Championship
John Barcroft, K6AM
"Start small and build" - W. Gates
The first ever WCRRTC is now in the record books. We had a small but
dedicated group of competitors. Hopefully you had a chance to work one of
the W6 1x1 stations sometime during the IARU contest. They were all
two-man teams operating mixed mode in the style of the upcoming WRTC contest
in Russia in 2010.
All the results have been tabulated and here they are:
W6A (N6KI + N6OX) - 288,768
W6B (WA6L + N6ERD) - 276,360
W6C (WN6K + W6NOW) - 149,804
The team of Dennis, N6KI and Bob, N6OX just edged out newcomers John, WA6L
and Dan, N6ERD at John's horse ranch in the hills east of San Diego. Coming
in third was veteran contester Paul, WN6K with new papa, Juan, W6NOW.
Ordinarily
the race would be too close to call until the logs were checked. However,
because our rules were different than the IARU rules, the ARRL is not able
to provide us with a Log Checking Report. So per our rules, we must go by
the claimed score to determine the winner.
The first place winner receives a plaque and second and third place winners
get a certificate. These will be presented at the 2009 Visalia DX
convention.
Thanks to all who helped out by giving points to our teams and if there is
enough interest, we will try it again next year.
* *
**
*SOAPBOX*
W6A
Band QSO's Zones HQ
160 2 1 0
80 125 8 3
40 356 26 8
20 532 26 13
15 39 6 3
10 0 0 0
Total 1054 67 27
Equipment - ICOM IC-7800, ACOM 2000A HF amp, 4 element MonstIR SteppIR
antenna (modified for 1 element on 40 mtrs), 80 mtr Inverted V coaxial stub
dipole, 160 mtr longwire).
As the contest weekend approached it was looking like N6KI might have to
forgo doing the competition due to other pressing matters that would keep me
from reassembling the station after Field Day. I worked into the wee hours
Friday night to get everything back together and configured. Also, two ham
friends that I asked to be my teammates also had to decline at the last
minute due to a pressing workweek.
At the midnight hour, the consummate World Traveler and DX-expeditioner
(TX0C, etc) Bob Grimmick, N6OX, recently back from Europe where he attended
the large ham fest in Friedrichschafen, happened to call and I recruited him
for my teammate.
Knowing that Bob was a SSB only Op, I jumped on 15 mtr CW to only find a few
stations left at midday and then jumped in the fray on 20 CW. Then at mid
afternoon, Bob started cranking out Qs on 20SSB.
I had some issues getting the control box of my MonstIR SteppIR antenna to
retract all but the driven element so I could qualify the antenna as a
single element on 40 mtrs. Every time I tried to QSY back to 15 and 20 mtrs,
the antenna would not extend their related elements properly, so I finally
gave up and when we finally QSY'd to 40 mtrs at 0520Z, after figuring a way
to extend out only the driven element on 40, we gave up on trying to get
back on 20, which, though milked out, might have yielded a few more Qs and
mults.
20 and 40 turned out to be the money bands and we found 80 mtrs at 0800 to
be relatively quiet with no storms in the area and picked up 8 zones and 3
HQ stations there. If there was an opening on 10 mtrs Saturday morning we
missed it and we erred by not putting in a bit more time on 160. Forty
meters was really hopping the last 3 or 4 hours of the contest and we had
great openings to JA
Bob and I were surprised to learn that with only just over 1000 Qs that we
were in contention for first place! It ironically and coincidently turned
out that all 3 stations
had 1 Op that only worked SSB and 1 Op who could operate mixed mode but I
suspect the mixed mode capable Ops at each station worked mainly CW leaving
SSB to their team mate.
Bob and I were very happy that we were able to participate. Thanks to John
for putting together this new FUN competition and we hope it becomes an
annual event during the official WRTC competition "off years" for many years
to come.
W6B
SSB CW TOTAL
BAND QSO's Points QSO's Points QSO's Points Mults
160 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
80 13 7 11 21 18 34 6
40 131 81 74 192 205 573 26
20 267 773 365 987 632 1760 55
15 71 179 19 63 90 242 15
10 7 13 4 10 11 23 3
Total: 483 359 473 1273 956 2632 105
This was the first full 24-hour effort for both me (WA6L) and Dan (N6ERD).
We both learned quite a bit from the experience, including:
- Contests should not be sponsored by radio manufacturers. Instead,
sponsors should include coffee companies, caffeinated sodas, and purveyors
of beef jerky and pretzels.
- You reach a point in the early morning where that little part of your
brain that decodes CW goes to sleep. At one point you are enjoying a modest
run on 40m. The next minute everything sounds like "Mary had a little lamb"
played on the Ocarina.
- Wearing depends does not improve your score
Propagation was not too bad. Basically, 20m was open the entire 24 hours to
somewhere. At 0800Z we were working the East Coast on Long Path and
listening to our echoed signals traveling around the globe (which seems
really cool when you are sleep deprived). There was a brief opening on 15m
and an even shorter one on 10m.
We lost our 160m antenna right before the start of the contest when someone
let the smoke out of the antenna relay switch. I don't think it cost us too
much. We did fine on 40m, but we really had a hard time on 80 with the
compromise vertical we were running. That is something we need to work on
for next time.
Europe was a stretch this weekend. We got some, but they were hard work.
Luckily, we had good propagation to Oceania and the Far East and were able
to get a decent number of 5-pointers from them.
Using a 1x1 call brings its own benefits and challenges. But it is a good
idea, as all the stations are working with the same length call and the same
advantages or disadvantages. But the most comical moment of the contest was
listening to Dan trying to explain a 1x1 call to D4C, who should have been
able to figure it out. "One, two, three, you have three, we have three"
etc. I wish I had a tape recorder.
We had two stations networked with Writelog and that was pretty sweet. You
can set it up so that when one station is sending, it locks out the
other. There were some limitations and a couple of minor problems, but it
was a solid configuration that I wouldn't hesitate to use again.
All in all, it was fun and educational -- we are already making plans and
coming up with ideas for next year. Thanks to K6AM and the SCCC for this
great idea!
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