CQ World Wide WPX Contest 1996
Call: WA7BNM Country: United States
Mode: SSB Category: Single Op, Low Power
Location: S.Calif Single Band: 15m
Operating Time: 18.7 hours
Band QSO Points Prefixes
--------------------------------
15 479 493 272 = 134,096
Comments:
Ended up on 15m single band again, after briefly considering:
10m - No: too boring
20m - No: too crowded, too many nets, too many SSTVers
40m - No: low power/split operation/West Coast, no sleep
80m - No: dipole, no sleep
High Points:
Found TJ1RA on Saturday without a pileup. Had him repeat his call
because I couldn't believe I was hearing a TJ on 15m. New band
country for me. (I know this doesn't rate as exciting from the
East Coast.)
While sustaining my amazing 4 Qs/hour run of zero pointers on Sunday
afternoon, was called by TJ1GB (op, W6RJ). Zowie. When it rains it
pours. Two TJs on 15m in one weekend!
While my wife was gardening in the front yard on Sunday, a car, whose
occupants had been peering at my tower and antennas, pulled to the
curb. My wife braced herself for the complaint. Surprise! The gentleman
who got out of the car was a ham from Tahiti who was visiting a neighbor
in the next block.
Zero point QSOs. (I know I must be desperate if I'm listing zero point
QSOs as a high point.) At least someone heard me. Even had an 80 hour
of zero pointers.
Low Points:
Lack of sunspots resulted in lack of activity on 15m. Even when signals were
good, there just weren't many on the band. To add insult to injury, solar
flux dropped from 71 to 70 during the contest.
No Europe. An EA8 was as close as I got.
For comparison, here's the results from my past three years of WPX SSB.
All with the same operator, same location, same transceiver, same 15m low
power category. Antenna change for 1996, but no impact on score.
<------------------ QSOs ------------------>
Year Score Prfx Tot NA(0 pnt) SA EU AS AF OC
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1994 841,940 473 922 365(312) 18 106 366 14 53
1995 448,448 352 663 271(224) 56 14 282 10 30
1996 134,096 272 479 346(299) 70 0 27 8 28
73 de Bruce, WA7BNM (bhorn@netcom.com)
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