CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: 6Y2A
Operator(s): W0YK, N6XI, N6BT, KE7X, N6XG, WA60, K2KW
Station: 6Y2A
Class: M/MAB HP
QTH: Jamaica
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs
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160: 75
80: 411
40: 1326
20: 2918
15: 3493
10: 2074
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Total: 10297 Prefixes = 1295 Total Score = 40,300,000
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
Another Team Vertical operation! Had lots of fun with a great bunch of
friends.
The above score is an estimation - we still need to patch toghether some logs
after we had CT problems. It will be interesting to see A61AJ's score - it was
great to have them as competition. With the EU point advantage, and
similar/higher reported QSO numbers during the contest, I suspect they beat us.
But that's OK, as our goal was a new North American record, not a world win.
We ran "simple" antennas with 2 ele verticals on 10. 15. 20, 40, 80, and an
inverted-L on 160. We were done setting up the station in record time and we
were able to relax... or so we thought!
Wednesday morning it started to rain. Here we are 5 days later and it has
FINALLY stopped raining. Maybe. It's still cloudy and looks like rain today as
we take down the station. A big tropical depression stalled over Jamaica and it
dumped inches of rain on us. Lots of mudslides, closed roads and flooding all
over the island.
Usually the surf noise impacts hearing (even with Heil headphones), but the
heavy rain pelting the metal roof was deafening! With heavy wind, the shack
floor kept getting flooded with water. Not too safe to walk barefoot!
Even with all the weather, most of the antennas held up OK. Only the 15m
antennas fell over, and one 80m radial. Salt buildup on the 80 antenna also
caused heavy interstation QRM on 40 and 20m. Oh, it also caused a strong 2nd
harmonic on 40m, and we got a 20 over S9 report in Ohio - on the harmonic
frequency! After cleaning the antenna and adding a coax stub, we cleaned up the
interference and harmonic problem.
Seemed we had a propagation "window" compared to the poor conditions before and
after the contest. 15 and 20m was HOT the first night. 10m was rather marginal
compared to last year - signals were much weaker. Thunderstorms from the
tropical depression caused problems hearing on 40-160. Activity on the low
bands was really poor this year, much worse than projected. Last year we did a
M/S using the same 40m antennas, and with only putting in about 12 hours on 40m
we had 1000 QSOs on 40 - this year with a full effort, we only had marginally
increased last year's numbers. Just seemed like low activity on all bands...
Got hit with some equipment problems this year... one MLA2500 fried in the first
day. A 2nd MLA2500 snapped, crackled, and popped during the contest (large bug
crawled in and got fried). WA6O was so startled by the fireworks, he almost hit
the ceiling. Ran most of the contest with 4 amps, switching between bands as
required. The 2nd night we ran 160m barefoot the entire night. The MFJ antenna
analyzer also was broken upon arrival, and after a few hours of surgery by KE7X
and N6XG got it fixed again. Whew. Try installing 6 bands of antennas without
one! CT 9.40 (supposedly a "solid" version for WPX M/M) ran into problems 45
hours into the contest. The 20m computer randomly adpoted the serial numbers of
both the 10m station and 15m station for a few QSOs until we realized what was
going on. At least what was sent, was logged.
Looking at the busted calls on packet was fun as always. I sometimes wonder if
we should send BY2A and just be done with it. Here are some fun quotes from
packet:
W3HVQ 21005.4 BY2A Beam @ 75 degrees
DL7ON 28012.6 BY2A lp
K0HA 21043.2 BY2A LP - Strongest on band!
Before the contest we spent a lot of time on the WARC bands and made thousands
of QSOs on those bands (98% CW). 6M Es was a bust this year, with less than 100
QSOs made.
The 3 Elecraft K2/100 radios (the 100w amps were both PRE field test, and Field
test units). The amps and rigs performed flawlessly. The combination of the K2
rig and 100w amp is a winner for DXpeditions. We used standard Kenwood and Icom
rigs on the other bands. We would again like to thank Force 12 for the loan of
the vertical arrays.
73, Kenny K2KW/6Y5
P.S. N6BT set up a light bulb on the ocean for continued antenna research, but
time ran out before he could do additional illuminating experimentation...
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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