RAC Winter Contest
Call: VE7JH
Operator(s): VE7JH
Station: VE7UF
Class: SO CW HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs CW Mults Ph Mults
----------------------------------------
160: 104 8
80: 187 8
40: 312 9
20: 428 10
15: 259 9
10: 94 8
6: 1 1
2: 1 1
----------------------------------------
Total: 1386 0 54 0 Total Score = 309,096
Club: Orca DX and Contest Club
Comments:
First of all I'd like to thank the RAC and especially the gang in VE5-land who
keep doing a fantastic job not only organizing the RAC contests but making them
more and more popular around the world every year.
A big thank you to my host for the great hospitality and the opportunity to use
a top-notch station.
I operated this year's Canada Winter Contest from Duane, VE7UF's contest
station on Vancouver Island.
At my last visit to Duane's (the ARRL 10m Contest) I mentioned about my plans
for the RAC and he thought that I should take a run at the SO-AB-CW category.
He operated it part time the year before and did very well compared to the top
dogs so he offered me the station as long as Itry to do better than the
previous record set in 2011 (283,392 points) by N0AC.
So I curtailed my dipole fixing activities in the back yard and took the 2 hour
drive to VE7UF. We set up a mast with a 2m and 6m loop hoping to work VE7RAC
about 200km away for an extra 40 points but it just turned out to be too far.
Luckily we had two sets of VHF gear so I worked my host on 6m and 2m for the
two BC mults.
VE7UF is a multi/multi setup with three stations side by each. I had them all
on different bandsso QSY-ing was a breeze without having to worry about
switching antennas and retuning amps.
10m was dead by the start so I started on 15m and then went to 20m (00UTC is
4PM here). I was a bit surprised by the good JA activity (ended up with 55 JA
QSOs by the end) but there were only a sprinkle of VEs so I changed to the low
bands after the first hour.
In the RAC contest one has to look for Canadians as they are worth 10p/QSO
versus getting only 2p/QSO for USA and DX. This rule often results in
soul-searching whether it's worth having a nice 100 QSO/hour run to the U.S
versus digging out a Canadian every 5 minutes. It's a greatbalancing act as it
is with every contest, really.
The next 6-7 hours were spent by alternating between 160, 80 and 40 trying to
S&P for mults and RAC stations while also calling CQ to pad the points column.
I did not worry about the mults much at that time hoping that things would take
care of themselves.
Just after local midnight I took a two hour nap. I'm not a young man any more
and had to work late the night before so I could take contest-saturday off.
Got back to the saddle at 1100 (3AM local) still jumping up and down the low
bands making about 35 QSOs per hour. This was my chance before the low bands go
dead at sunrise to try to look for mults. I successfully QSY-ed a few stations
to fill in the mults sheet and ended up with BC/AB/MB/SK/ON/QC/NB/NS on all
three, and NL on 40m. Nothing from the three territories (YT/NT/NU) or Prince
Edward Island (PE).
That was it for the low bands except for a quick foray to 40m for the last 45
minutes of the contest but by then I wasn't chasing mults as you'll see if you
read on.
At daybreak I switched the three stations to the high bands and I started
chasing 'em up there. There were some really good runs to the U.S., it's nice
to see our neighbours come out and play with us. Good activity from Canada as
well, at the times the VE's were 3-4 deep answering my CQ.
At around 1600 20m burst open to Europe. It was a great opening, nice strong
and clear signals with no Aurora. There were a lot of EU stations on and some
had great serial numbers by then and they seemed to be happy to hear the
Western Canadian multipliers. I guess we're just as much a DX to them as they
are to us.
Unfortunately I had to leave 20m as 15 and 10 were coming alive in the early
morning and I needed more mults. So I pretty much spent the rest of the contest
bouncing between the three high bands trying to eek out VE and RAC stations
while filling in the mult sheet.
The mults actually kept coming pretty good, near then end VE5UF gave me SK on
10m and I tried with VE4YU for MB but that was not to be.
No VO on 15 or 10, but PE were worked on all three high bands.
I was disappointed in the Territories, no VY1, VE8 or VY0 were heard at all. I
hope there was better activity on SSB from up North.
Early in the morning the points total did not increase as I was hoping for. I
was aiming for 300k and the mults were slow coming. Luckily the QSO total was
increasing and finally with about 2 hours to go I passed the 283k mark set by
N0AC. After that it was smooth sailing and had a lot of fun joining the
majority and making QSO's for fun.
Duane's station performed very well. The IC-756 Pro's are great radios for
cutting down QRM, and the antenna farm gave me a great advantage. Being able to
switch between stacks of Yagis made pulling out that weak signal a breeze. Of
course running a kW will make your signal stand out at the other end too. A
multi/multi setup at your disposal takes the guessing out of QSY-ing. I can
actually listen to the other band while still CQ-ing on the first one.
Before the contest I looked through the 3830 reports from the last few years
and if you read this far down you probably like to do the same to get a feel
for how (and how well) others do.
Now some numbers that I gathered from N1MM's Statistics. By the way, kudos to
the N1MM crew as well for making contesters' quality of life so much better.
TNX!
1386 QSOs, 45 DXCC.
W: 782
VE: 326
JA: 55
DL: 24
F: 16
G: 13
Rest EU: 61
SA: 16
Rest AS: 12
OC: 5
AF: 4
(the total is a few short, but you get the picture)
Canada:
ON: 160
BC: 52
SK: 28
QC: 28
AB: 27
NS: 18
NB: 10
MB: 8
PE: 5
NL: 3
YT: 0
NT: 0
VY0: 0
I made 26 RAC QSOs with at least one from:
VE7, VE6, VE5, VE4, VA3, VA2, VE1, VE9, VO1.
I will upload my log to http://members.shaw.ca/ve7dxg/contests/
after the log submission deadline. (If I forget remind me or I'd be happy to
e-mail you a copy.)
Rates:
Date Hour Total VE7JH Running Total
2012-12-29 0 82 82 82
2012-12-29 1 124 124 206
2012-12-29 2 88 88 294
2012-12-29 3 70 70 364
2012-12-29 4 52 52 416
2012-12-29 5 44 44 460
2012-12-29 6 33 33 493
2012-12-29 7 36 36 529
2012-12-29 8 19 19 548
2012-12-29 11 35 35 583
2012-12-29 12 35 35 618
2012-12-29 13 27 27 645
2012-12-29 14 30 30 675
2012-12-29 15 82 82 757
2012-12-29 16 103 103 860
2012-12-29 17 115 115 975
2012-12-29 18 83 83 1058
2012-12-29 19 60 60 1118
2012-12-29 20 73 73 1191
2012-12-29 21 82 82 1273
2012-12-29 22 47 47 1320
2012-12-29 23 66 66 1386
Total All Hours 1386 1386 0
Thanks to all who called adn see you on July 1, for Canada Day!
73,
Gabor, VE7JH
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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