CALL: ON4UN
OPERATOR: ON4AFZ
CLASS: SINGLE OP
QSO: 724
QSO POINTS: 4171
STATES: 31
COUNTRIES: 61
SCORE: 396,245 POINTS
THE STORY:
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Freddy, ON4AFZ who was also part of the "young" crew for the CQ WW Phone
last Oc-tober was to operate the phone 160 m con-test.
The QRM from the chemical was still there, and of course it is much more
noticeable on SSB with the wider bandwidth. But of course, the QRM level is
generally much higher in the phone contest as well.
The first two hours of the contest were extremely difficult. The QRM was
incredible, the rate very low. Then it started calming down, and in the
middle of the night Freddy man-aged to settle somewhere in the DX window.
The first North American station was KA1BQ/VE1 at 23:42 GMT, but the band
re-mained very flat with only 6 US contacts until 05:30. Then at 05:30
someone threw the switch, and suddenly the band popped wide open until
sunrise(06:30). In total 60 W's were worked in 24 States during the first
night. he station furthest West was AA0RS in Colorado.
on Saturday evening the band remained very poor to North America. The first
USA station was K2WI at 01:00 GMT. In the mean time Freddy has worked TT8BP
at 00:08GMT. I was in bed when this happened, but we have everything on
tape, and I checked the record-ing which was very clear: Italian accent etc.
Hopefully nobody was pulling our leg. This is a new country for me! The band
was apparently suffering from a magnetic disturbance as nothing at all was
hear from Northerly regions while the Caribbean and Central America did
pretty well with P40V, XE1RCS, VP5/K0KX, TI4CF, YS1X, TG9NX, YS1RRD, and
YV1RF. One hour before local sunrise the band started peaking somewhat, and
some of the more Northerly regions came in, yielding new mul-tipliers such
as VE2, VE3 and VE1 (NB). The furthest West we got on the second night was
Texas (KE5FI, K5HT). All together, the second night was much worse than the
first one with only 36 North American station worked. All in all 31
states/provinces were worked.
Three African stations were worked (5N0MVE, EA8PP and TT8BP. The Middle East
was very absent with no 4X4 (where were 4X4NJ and 4X4DK?), and only A92BE.
Four South American stations were worked (YV1IF, PY0FF, PY7CB and P40V).
Asia was very poor as well, with only 14 stations, and not a single exotic
station (only UA9's and other ex USRR republics). A good deal of the
Euro-pean "rare" ones were worked , such as EA6ARM, GD4WBY, GJ3YHU, GM0ILB
(Shetlands), HV3SJ, IS0QDV, OY9JD (of course), T70A, SV2BFN, T93M, TK5KP
YO5ODE and ZA1AJ.
In total 724 QSO's were made (755 last year when ON4WW operated my station),
with 95 multipliers (64 countries and 31 states/provinces), vs. 93 last year
(69/24). The final score is 396,245 points, vs. 398.084 last year. We came 4
European QSO's short for beating our last year's record!
Freddy was able to stay on 1833.5 (in the middle of the DX window) all night
long, and I guess it paid off. The DX window is a good idea. He got insulted
twice by an OK station who said that "he had to move out of the DX window",
though... What if the US and the DX stay out? Who will we be calling then???
Maybe the rules should make clear to the newcomers who is the DX and what
the DX window means.
Freddy enjoyed it, and I enjoyed observing and coaching him. At least I got
a few hours of sleep on both nights.
See you all next year!
John, ON4UN
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john.devoldere@innet.be
Call us in all major 1996 contests: ON4UN (OT6T in WPX)
John Devoldere (ON4UN-AA4OI)
POBOX 41
B-9000 Ghent (Belgium)
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