1998 IARU HF CHAMPIONSHIP
Call used: K7SV Location: 8
Category: Single Op All Band Mode: CW Power: 100W
Hours of Operation: 23:58
CW CW band
band QSOs pts mults
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160 10 24 9 Top loaded vertical
80 36 92 21 Dipole @ 50'
40 264 982 40 2el KLM @ 63'
20 496 2124 47 KT34XA
15 463 2033 44 @
10 20 60 9 55'
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TOTAL 1289 5315 170 SCORE: 903,550
My first serious contest effort since turning 50. Seems to me
I heard somewhere that it got better at 50; was that contesting?
I don't think I've ever put anything resembling a serious effort
into this contest before. Normally I pull all the low band wires
down for the summer right after CW WPX. Between antenna work
with NJ4F, fishing, and yard work I never pulled them down.
During the PVRC club meeting at the W3LPL gala gathering a few
weeks ago, I put in a plug for the NAQP contests in August. Then
Rich, KE3Q put in one for the IARU. That planted a seed that
germinated the middle of last week and took root Thursday night.
After listening around the bands, it appeared that 15 would be
the place to start. I rather hesitated to do so because my
XA has shown pretty poor f/b since I put the 40 above it. Well,
15 was the place to start and to stay for hours. It was rate
city! Gave me a little confidence in the XA on 15, and the
lack of f/b was a blessing. A lot of stateside stuff called
off the back.
It's always interesting to work a contest in what we most think
of as the off season. Propagation is really different, with 20
staying open all night. The low bands are typically miserable
due to noise. Conditions were disturbed with the solar flux
being fairly low. I could hear whispers of Eur working SA on 10,
but could never really copy Eur on the direct or SE skewed
path. After reading about 15 opening l/p to Eur in the wee
hours of the morning during the CW WPX under disturbed condx,
I decided to keep an eye on the band this time. Sure enough
the band opened l/p, but signals weren't real good and I
couldn't find anything that hadn't already been worked. 20
was pretty good with some nice signals from JA, but there
didn't appear to be a lot of activity from there. It is
certainly nice not to have the muf drop below 7mhz. Between
that and a remarkably low qrn level 40 was a lot of fun. 80
produced fairly well and I was really amazed to hear let
alone work ZL2JR on top band. Things got pretty thin at the
end of the contest. Running low power made it real easy
to switch bands, and in the final couple of hours did that
a lot.
I think K8CC said he was going to put this contest on his
stringer as a keeper as I plan to do. This one was really
a pleasure. I had three hours of rate exceeding a hundred.
We do better than that from NJ4F, but there's a bit of
difference between stacks and full power and a tribander
and 100 watts. The contest ended at 8AM Sunday. I slept
until noon and went to bed at my mormal time that evening.
Felt great Monday! Next year we may even have Eur on ten.
See you all in NAQP, and my buds out west in CQP (thanks
for the vino!)
73 de Larry K7SV
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