CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: W1ECT
Operator(s): W1ECT
Station: W1ECT
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 15.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 42 9 28
80: 134 10 48
40: 68 16 46
20: 367 25 72
15: 124 20 67
10: 18 5 10
------------------------------
Total: 753 85 271 Total Score = 754,720
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
For some reason I didn't feel very motivated for this contest, I guess I wasn't
looking forward to all the stress. Just before the contest started I decided to
leisurely scan the bands for QSOs and do little or no CQing. I set 500 QSOs as
a "low-stress" goal.
Friday: Spent the first hour and a half scanning 40 meters and only made 45
QSOs. Conditions were terrible, European stations were very weak and many of
them couldn't hear me. Moved to 80 meters and found conditions there were great
- European stations were very strong and I had no trouble breaking through
pileups. I picked up nearly 100 QSOs in two hours. Before going to bed I made a
quick scan of 20 meters and worked a few Caribbean and South American stations
(15 QSOS/15 minutes).
Saturday: Got a late start (10 AM) and started out on 15 meters - not much
coming in and logged 50 QSOs from Europe and SA. Moved to 20 and logged about
75 more QSOs... Now since I had scanned all the open bands it was finally time
for some CQing. 20m was open to Europe and I logged 250 QSOs in about 2 hours -
at times I had 4 or 5 guys calling with the rate meter going up to 150, wasn't
this the "high stress" situation I was trying to avoid? Next I went to 10m and
logged a dozen Caribbean and South American QSOs. Finished the daylight hours
doing a couple more scans of 15 and 20 meters. I took a long break and at 10 PM
I did a scan of 160 meters logging about 40 QSOs in an hour. There was quite a
bit of activity so I just scanned by the big pile-ups and concentrated on
everyone else. I was pleasantly surprised to log OJ0J and OH0Z after finding
them calling CQ with no takers. At the end of the contest I discovered this was
my best ever QSO/Zone/Country count for 160 - it didn't seem like a big deal at
the time. Finished the evening doing a scan of 80 meters, conditions there were
still very good with lots of strong European stations coming through.
Sunday: Got another late start and did a scan 10, 15, and 20 meters and another
short stint at CQing on 20 meters until it was time to watch the football game.
The fact that I stopped my run with the rate meter above 100 is a good an
indication that this wasn't a typical CQ WW weekend for me.
At some point on Saturday I was surprised to see how many QSOs I had logged so I
reset my goal to 750 which turned out to be just about right. I was curious to
see how the results of this "CQ as a last resort" style of operating would
affect my totals, more multipliers perhaps? As it turns out it seems that
conditions played a bigger role than operating style - good conditions on 160
and 80 and lousy conditions on 40, 15, and 10. Only logging 48 QSOs on 40
meters was the biggest surprise, I'll be interested to read other accounts to
see if other folk had problems there as well. Other than the OJ0 and OH0 QSOs
on 160 meters the only other nice find was TX0P (Mayotte) who was plaintively
calling CQ without any takers at 21.112 on Saturday afternoon.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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