To expand upon the earlier score posting. First the details, and then
the soapbox.
CALL HRS SCORE QS0'S PTS SECTS DX
_____________________________________________________________________
K7ZO (at NK7U) ~34 151,656 897 2,136 56 15
Multi-op: Operators K7ZO, W7ZRC (operating at NK7U's station)
Exchange: 59 Oregon (NK7U is in Baker City, Oregon.)
Team/Club : Southwest Idaho Contest Club
Antennas: 1/4 wave elevated ground plane. Feed about 15' off the
ground. The feed is pulled 1/8 wave away to the east from the base of
a 180' AB-105 tower to give it some reflection gain in that direction.
Three raised radials sloping down from the feedpoint to 8' high at the
ends. The radials are all on the east side of the feedpoint. Also, the
second night a 500' sub optimal E-W beverage. It was sub optimal in
that: it was suspended about 4' above a barbed wire fence for most of
its length, it ran between four 190'+/- towers and just outside the
radials of the 160M ground plane, we had the feed end looped around a
fence post to keep it taught, and we didn't get any of the grounding
done at the transformer feed. But, it did seem to help on a few QSO's
and certainly was quieter than the ground plane.
Radios: First night TS-950S, second night K7ZO's brand new FT-1000MP
making its first Q's.
Amp: Amp International LK-800 NTC
Software: TR 5.98
Scoring Summary:
Total unduped Q's = 897, 803=2 pointers, 82=5 pointers, 12=10 pointers
Mults: WAS, VE1-VE7, VY1, and CM, H4, HK, KH6, KL7, KP4, P4, PJ2, TG,
TI, UA9, V4, VK, VP5, and XE.
Mult Distribution
1. CA 120
2. WA 49
3. TX 37
4. IL 37
5. PA 34
6. AZ 31
7. OR 29
8. NJ 28
9. OH 28
10. CO 22
11. VE6 22 Good turnout.
12. GA 22
13. MI 22
14. NY 22
15. VE7 19
16. FL 19 Pretty good for being in Or.
17. WI 19
18. TN 18
19. VA 16
20. MN 15
21. NC 14
22. CT 14
23. ID 13
24. UT 13
25. IA 12
26. NV 11
27. MT 11
28. NM 11
29. KS 11
30. AR 11
31. IN 11
32. AL 10
33. MO 10
34. MA 10
35. VE3 9
36. VE4 9
37. MD 9
38. OK 8
39. XE 7
40. KY 7
41. WY 6
42. WV 6
43. SD 6
44. NH 5
45. NE 5
46. KH6 5
47. RI 5
48. LA 4
49. ME 3
50. KL 3
51. ND 3 Second to last state, then 3 in an hour!
52. CM 3 Amazing! CO3JA, T48RAC, CO2GG
53. VE5 2
54. MS 2
55. DE 2
56. UA9 2 UA0ZAZ, UA0DC
57. SC 2 Had us worried though K4YYL CQ'd on our freq
both nights until we finally worked him.
58. VY1 1 Someone should give Jay a special award -- Most
Multipliers handed out in a lifetime.
59. VE1 1 Always tough
60. VE2 1 Ditto
61. V4 1 V47KP
62. KP4 1 KP4SN called us.
63. H4 1 H44MS for the second year in a row called us.
64. PJ2 1 PJ9JT called us.
65. TI 1 TI5RL called us.
66. P4 1 P40V called us.
67. VP5 1 VP5JP called us.
68. VT 1 Our last state! Had us reeeeeealy worried. The one
that W7GG missed.
69. TG 1 TG9NX, and we beat WB9Z in the pileup.
70. HK 1 HK6ISX, pretty weak and not many calling.
71. VK 1 VK3EW, and he called us. Fantastic signal.
HOUR 160SSB TOTAL ACCUM
---- ------ ----- -----
22 8 8 8
23 18 18 26
0 28 28 54
1 39 39 93
2 40 40 133
3 73 73 206
4 50 50 256
5 56 56 312
6 44 44 356
7 40 40 396
8 23 23 419
9 27 27 446
10 21 21 467
11 23 23 490
12 27 27 517
13 14 14 531
14 11 11 542
15 0 0 542
---------------------------
21 0 0 542
22 1 1 543
23 2 2 545
0 8 8 553
1 13 13 566
2 15 15 581
3 71 71 652
4 46 46 698
5 35 35 733
6 35 35 768
7 26 26 794
8 14 14 808
9 26 26 834
10 21 21 855
11 21 21 876
12 13 13 889
13 7 7 896
14 2 2 898
Soapbox and Play-by-Play
========================
It is always fun to operate from NK7U's. Joe could not make it this
weekend but was kind enough to let us use his station for CQ 160 SSB.
He will be there for ARRL next weekend. Following is our soapbox.
Specific calls mentioned are meant to illustrate our reporting of the
situation as we saw it and are not meant to be flaming or otherwise
whining. A contest is a competition and a certain amount of aggression
is expected. Also, K7ZO operated from NK7U last year as single op
under his old call AA7TF -- so some comparisons to last year have been
made. Finally, we have tried to use the term "we" as a generic
reference to either K7ZO or W7ZRC. Obviously only one of us was on the
air at any point in time. We just thought this might make the reading
easier.
K7ZO starts the contest as he was able to get off early and make the
drive over to Baker from Boise. Arriving a couple hours before the
contest he had to get TR up and running with the rig control. Having
done this routine many times with all sorts of contesting software and
PC's it should have been easy. But he could just not make it work. Not
only was the software not working, thus the rig control not working,
but the screen display looked terrible. There was no way we could
stare at that screen for the endless hours we were about to. K7ZO
ended up cabling in a PC he brought over to get ready for our Multi-2
effort in ARRL SSB next weekend. During the quiet time on Saturday
afternoon we tore apart the offending PC and discovered that a local
computer "technician" had managed to totally mess up the four port
serial board. They swapped boards meaning the labels on the back of
the PC did not match what the ports really were and randomly plugged
the jumpers into boards in the PC. The COM4 jumper was actually
plugged into the display board which is what was causing the display
to go crazy. With this kind of help who needs enemies?
Though sunset is somewhere around 1:30 UTC K7ZO fires up on 1820 at
22:00 UTC. He then starts reading magazines until N7WWQ calls in for
the first Q at 22:24. Surprised he drops the magazine and replies back
"QRZ NK7U". A few more folks call in and we end the first hour with 8
Q's. This is 8 ahead of last year so the trend is good. However, we
quickly lose the early bird start advantage and by the end of the
23:00 hour we are 2 Q's and 2 mults behind last year. We are not
worried about the mults as those will fill in later, but we have to
get the Q's in the log. On the bright side we have been on 1820 for
two hours and seem to be holding our own. The ground plane at NK7U has
a 2:1 bandwidth from 1800 to 1850 so we are somewhat constrained as to
how much of the band we can use. When we finish building the M2 160M
dipole and get it up at 200' this problem should go away. Next year
for sure!
At 00:24 the we work our first DX and the first of our seven XE's as
XE2/K4JT calls in. As the contest progresses we begin thinking that it
may be time to change the multiplier class for XE's. Since they are
now classified DX they can park in the DX window for hours at a time
effectively covering up longer haul DX. There were a couple of XE's in
particular that used this to their advantage, though not all, and
XE2/K4JT was not one. To put it in perspective what if Canada was like
this? So, how about if we make the Mexican states/call areas separate
mults and then ask XE's to stay out of the DX Window? [And yes we
could echo many of the other observations others have made regarding
the DX window. On each morning we had to ask several well known
eastern US stations to QSY out of the window. Though it may have been
"after dawn" to them we were still a couple of hours away in Oregon
and had a chance to work some Pacific DX. Come on guys, use some
common sense!]
Moving on, at 00:41 we surprise N7UE by calling him by name out of the
TRMASTER file. Before the contest K7ZO filled it with last year's log
and the vanity updates. It really is fun. A short time later we work
our first dupe -- K5HK. I think he tried to work us about 3 or 4 times
later in the contest. After one he said he really was not keeping a
log and was just working the loud stations he found. Enough new
stations call in though that we are 11 Q's ahead of last year by 1:00.
This was a lead that would steadily grow through the night. At 1:10
N7ML calls in and says we are 40 over in MT. That kind of signal
report we can take anytime. About then we also start hearing K4YYL in
South Carolina also CQing on the frequency. We tried working him but
he did not hear us so we just ignored him and he QSY's later. Little
did we know how hard SC was going to be later on. At 1:25 W2FCR says
we are 20 over in CO so propagation is starting to stretch out as we
reach local sunset. Rates start picking up and we work through many
stations and mults. In the hour from 1:30 - 2:30 we work 35 stations
and 8 mults including VE3EJ who had a big signal all contest.
At 2:30 W7ZRC takes over from K7ZO who has been in the chair for 4 1/2
hours. He proceeds to crank off our best hour of the weekend with 73
Q's in the 0300 hour. He also settled in on 1810 which was around
where we were most successful during the weekend since the ground
plane did not play above 1850. K7ZO took back over at 0400 and
promptly lost the frequency as KP4AAQ came on. It was one of those
classic 160M frequency losses. As we were calling CQ we could hear
parts of KP4AAQ's call coming through. Thinking he is trying to work
us we work on sorting out the call, though the exchange is not going
the way it is expected. Then as a dozen other stations suddenly appear
on frequency you realize the other station is CQ'ing as well and is
much more attractive than you are. So, up we go to 1812.5. Jay, VY1JA
calls in at 5:30 for the always appreciated Yukon multiplier. At the
time he was pretty weak but his familiar call gives him a few extra S-
units. W7ZRC gets the seat back at 0600 as K7ZO heads to the sack for
a couple of hours. During the next 3 1/2 hours KP4SN calls in giving
us at least some compensation for losing the frequency to another KP4.
We also get our only VE1 and VE2 during that time and V47KP as a
bonus.
Fresh from his nap K7ZO takes over at 9:30 UTC and puts in a fairly
slow 4 hours making only 82 Q's during that time. For all except the
most dedicated operators this is the time most people sleep and the
number of active stations drops. We work no new mults. The highlight
was KH6CC saying we were 59+ into Hawaii. He was one of the few
stations we actually worked in the DX window the whole weekend. At
13:30 W7ZRC steps in and works UA0ZAZ as his first QSO! Then H44MS
calls in at 13:50 and UA0DC at 14:30 during this slow period. Thanks
N6TR for the Auto-CQ feature in TR! We make our last QSO of the day at
14:48 and end up with 544 Q's and 60 mults. This compares with last
years single op total of 472/55. We feel good. Obviously we will not
make 1,000 Q's, but we think 100,000 points is in reach. What we feel
crummy about is hearing W7GG work KH8/N5OLS at 15:00 and not being
able to hear the KH8 at all. We never did work him the whole weekend,
yet we should have been in the log easily and really should have been
on the "Early Openers" list. In hindsight we wonder if there is a null
in our antenna pattern that way.
After a nice steak and egg breakfast we head back to the station for
some the prep work for the upcoming ARRL DX SSB test. We fix the PC
per earlier notes and then decide to build the beverage described
earlier. Since our notes from the first night were peppered with "We
need a beverage" annotations, we finally put our money where our mouth
was. Luckily NK7U has all the parts for quite an array of beverages
left over from his old QTH. It took us about 2 hours of work to
assemble the 500' E-W beverage. In hindsight it worked at best fairly,
may have added a few Q's, but it did give us something to do instead
of sleep all afternoon. We also worked a few stations in the French
contest to do A/B comparisons on the 5/5/5/5 vs 6/6 20M antennas in
preparation for next weekend.
Determined to squeeze every last Q out of the bands he could, K7ZO sat
down at 22:00 UTC and started calling CQ. In the next 3 hours we work
a grand total of 12 QSO's. In perspective this is the time period from
roughly 3 1/2 hours to 1/2 hour before local sunset. Because the
population is so spread out in the west, the daytime QSO rates are
much lower than in the east. But, you never know what QSO might move
you up a spot in the results and we did end up in a very close race
with W7GG. They actually beat us by 11 QSO points but we had 1 more
mult!
W7ZRC takes his first session of the evening from 1:00 to 4:00 UTC.
K4YYL again is found calling CQ on our frequency as the propagation
opens up east. We finally work him at 1:54 for our SC mult. PJ9JT
calls in at 2:30, TI5RLI at 3:00, and P40V at 3:45 for three more
appreciated mults. The 3:00-4:00 hour again proves to be the best of
the night and W7ZRC cranks off a 71 hour. We swap operators at 4:00
and work at the usual second night slow but steady rate for 4 hours
working a total of 142 stations. VP5JP calls in at 5:10. A little
while later to fight the boredom we start throwing in "are there any
VT or ND out there" into our CQ messages. Not soon after we hear that
W0ZTL is at 1850 so up we go to grab the mult. Then as usually happens
two others call in during the next hour. This leaves VT as our missing
state and we are starting to get worried. It is now 3AM on the east
coast local time. W7ZRC picks up the challenge starts CQ'ing away at
8:00. As expected the rate starts tapering off and he works only 14
stations in the first hour. His note pad is filled with some anomalies
he has noticed in TR. A little before 9:00 a train parks itself on the
tracks that are 100 yards to the east of the shack and creates some
terrible QRM. From what I have heard locomotives are basically a giant
generator driving giant electric motors. We usually can tell when a
train goes buy the sudden increase in noise level. When one parks
itself we can really have problems as happened here. However, even
through the noise CO3JA was easily heard at 9:27 for a surprise mult.
The next QSO after that was with N1IO in VT! We finally made WAS and
this mult turned out to be quite important in our final standings. At
10:00, with the noise as bad as ever, we pick T48RAC out of the ether.
Here was one QSO that would never have happened without the beverage
we had put up in the afternoon. The third Cuba station enters the log
at 10:50 when CO2GG calls in. W7ZRC decided to celebrate by taking a
nap and K7ZO sits down to find out we lost the frequency. Tuning up to
the DX Window we hear TG9NX running stations. We had heard him earlier
but could not break through. So we noted it and decided to try later.
As we jump in the pile we hear several other notable stations in it,
WB9Z among them. On our third try we are in their log and we happily
tune on up band. It was probably the only time we beat out WB9Z all
weekend. As the dial hit 1850 we catch a DX QSO in process as a
station up in Seattle is trying to pick a HK call out. We can hear
HK6ISX and work him quite easily with 1 call for an unexpected mult.
The next 90 minutes is quite slow until VK3EW calls us at 12:55 and we
work him with only 1 repeat of his call. Now, that was fun! We still
don't understand why we could not work the KH8. After that we work a
grand total of 9 more stations in the next 90 minutes, pulling the
plug at 14:45 just after our local sunrise.
We were very pleased with our score of 151K+. Considering we went into
the second night just hoping to break 100K, we were extremely happy.
The big difference was the number of DX multipliers. Having 12
10 pointers was another big difference compared to last year's 5.
Comparing this year's Multi score to last year's Single Op score:
Hours Score Q's Points Sections DX
97 Multi ~34 151,656 897 2,136 56 15
96 Single ~24 95,465 677 1,565 53 8
(2nd in Zone 3)
Difference +42% +59% +32% +48% +6% +88%
As a final story we have to pass on an event that we observed the
first night. We could hear both sides of a QSO in process though
obviously the CQ'ing station was having trouble making out the calling
station. And no wonder. The calling station was playing games with
him. As the CQ'ing station worked out a few letters of the call, the
calling station then changed them! The CQ'ing station, who thought he
had pulled that part of the call out, then got confused and once again
started to piece the call together. The calling station then again
changes his call! About this time the CQ'ing station figures out
someone is playing with him and begins CQ'ing again. It is too bad
that this type of behavior has now found its was to 160. You may want
to be on the lookout for it.
Thanks to everyone for dropping by and giving us a QSO's. We will see
you next year.
K7ZO & W7ZRC
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