Russian DX Contest
Call: K3NA
Operator(s): K3NA
Station: W1KM
Class: SO CW HP
QTH: Ma
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 6 6
80: 132 53
40: 371 83
20: 423 104
15: 236 81
10: 28 16
-------------------
Total: 1196 343 Total Score = 2,582,447
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Team:
Comments:
The 10m total should tip you off to the story: putrid conditions at the start of
the contest. This was a bit of a surprise as 40m
was very hot Friday night, with long path JAs during 01z with huge signals.
Milked 15m and 10m for all the mults I could find
before the faded shut. No JAs to move to 40m on Saturday evening... During
Saturday 10m opened to Europe only occasionally at about
110° azimuth. Even PY and LU were weak.
15m wasn't much better, but reasonably direct and, with very watery signals,
fairly deep into Russia for those important 10-pt QSOs
and oblast multipliers. Southern Russians and almost all European signals were
contaminated by auroral flutter at the start After
about 6 hours conditions started to improve: signals got a little louder, less
watery, and more direct, but it was too late for many
parts of the world.
Even 20m was a chore at the beginning! In fact, the 20m QSO total was easily
surpassed by 40m during the night, with 20m over 80
QSOs behind 40m when it opened at 1000z. Signals quickly grew large during 10z
and the rate meter reached its best level of the
contest, allowing 20m to pull ahead as the lead band in the end... with a
handful of JA long path in the final 11z hour. 15m had
weak, skew path signals from Europe and Asia during the last two hours with
occasional loud Russians who were mostly hearing
Europeans -- all crooked path. Didn't even bother to check 10m at the end of
the contest. Oddly, 20m started fading in the last 30
minutes, but 15m wasn't prepared to shoulder the load of rate.
40m CW was a hoot! 9M and HS signals calling in strong before our local sunset.
Worked Kazakh, Georgia, and east Europeans over 2
1/2 hours past their sunrise. Big error: got sucker-punched by a giant rate
fade during 06z, with 37 minutes in log with no QSOs!
Took a necessities break, not tuning around aggressively, and came back to find
40m signals had built back up and the rate was again
high for a couple hours. Would not be surprised to see that I got passed by
other competitors during this hour. 40m Europe finally
bit the dust around 08z... followed by two painfully slow hours until 20m became
a viable source of rate. Having screwed up
earlier, and not wanting to fall further behind, I kept hunting and calling...
All in all Thursday's decision to operate CW-only and not mixed (the original
plan), for reasons that had nothing to do with
propagation, turned out be to fortuitous. I expect SSB QSOs were a real
chore!
Lots of other close QSO totals heard on the east coast, but not sure of
categories. Log checking & QSO points will be important, as
usual...
Rate sheet attached.
Thanks, Greg, for letting me borrow the station.
-- Eric K3NA
==========================================
Hour 160m 80m 40m 20m 15m 10m Total Cumm
OffTime
D1-1200Z - - - 5/3 77/20 - 82/23 82/23
D1-1300Z - - - 3/1 43/5 1/1 47/7 129/30
D1-1400Z - - - 4/3 23/3 19/10 46/16 175/46
D1-1500Z - - - 21/9 13/0 4/2 38/11 213/57
D1-1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 15/4 29/2 3/1 47/7 260/64
D1-1700Z - - - 21/2 29/2 - 50/4 310/68
D1-1800Z - - - 52/8 11/5 1/0 64/13 374/81
D1-1900Z - - - 61/7 - - 61/7 435/88
D1-2000Z - - - 53/5 - - 53/5 488/93
D1-2100Z - - 12/8 43/7 - - 55/15 543/108
D1-2200Z - - 73/17 - - - 73/17 616/125
D1-2300Z - 12/11 46/7 - - - 58/18 674/143
D2-0000Z 1/1 34/8 4/0 --+-- --+-- --+-- 39/9 713/152
D2-0100Z - 9/2 45/4 - - - 54/6 767/158
D2-0200Z - 17/5 49/3 - 1/0 - 67/8 834/166
D2-0300Z 4/3 44/2 - - - - 48/5 882/171
D2-0400Z 1/1 11/1 37/2 1/0 - - 50/4 932/175
D2-0500Z - 5/1 53/2 1/0 - - 59/3 991/178
D2-0600Z - - 16/1 1/0 - - 17/1 1008/179
D2-0700Z - - 27/1 1/0 - - 28/1 1036/180
D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- 8/0 5/0 --+-- --+-- 13/0 1049/180
D2-0900Z - - 1/1 5/2 - - 6/3 1055/183
D2-1000Z - - - 60/1 3/0 - 63/1 1118/184
D2-1100Z - - - 71/2 5/0 - 76/2 1194/186
D2-1200Z - - - - 2/0 - 2/0 1196/186
Total: 6/5 132/30 371/46 423/54 236/37 28/14
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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