ARRL DX Contest, SSB
Call: N5AW
Operator(s): N5AW
Station: N5AW
Class: SOAB LP
QTH: TX
Operating Time (hrs): 38.5
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 16 15
80: 77 47
40: 190 66
20: 219 80
15: 337 81
10: 264 71
-------------------
Total: 1103 360 Total Score = 1,191,240
Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club
Comments:
This was a struggle. For the second year in a row my score is lower than the
previous year. Perhaps I have an excuse this time. We live on a ranch with no
close neighbors so, except for an intermittent noise to the west, I've been
blessed with a quiet location. During the CW weekend on Sunday morning for the
first time I had a high noise level to the north. It was intermittent for a few
days but a week ago it started full time. With the car radio I found very loud
line noise two miles north of me. Unfortunately I could not pinpoint the source
with my VHF noise finder. The power company came out Thursday but had no luck in
curing the problem. I do have an appointment with their noise expert for later
this week but that did not help last weekend. The noise runs from S4 to S6 on
my S-meter on 160 through 20. Fortunately it drops off on 15 meters to S2 to 3
and is barely discernable on 10.
When I only worked one JA on 15 Friday evening I knew this was not going to be
a great contest. I always track my progress against last year's score on an
hourly basis and I was behind from the get-go. By sunrise Sunday I was over
100K behind 2012. However I slowly closed the gap, thanks in part to an opening
to Europe on ten that wasn't great but was better than in 2012. By the end I had
actually exceeded my 2012 multiplier count and had only 73 less contacts leaving
a gap of 42K.
One thing I don't understand about propagation is why conditions to Europe can
differ so much from those to Japan and Eastern Asia. Last year in this contest
I worked 200 JA's and 394 Europeans. This year only 83 JA's but 528 Europeans.
My only JA's on 10 were two worked on a skew path late Sunday afternoon. Last
year I had 16 JA's and 24 Europeans on 10, this year 2 JA's and 102 Europeans.
Tried hard to run more but just could not get anything going. Had a little luck
Sunday morning with JA's on 40 and a few Western Europeans on 10 but otherwise
it was nearly all S&P - only 116 run QSOs despite many, many CQs.
Marv N5AW
Radios: Tentec Orion, Elecraft K3 â?" 100 watts
Antennas:
160m: 42m tower with 6 elevated radials @ 22m
80m: 5 sloping dipole array from 41m tower
40m: Moxon @ 42m, Lazy H @ 40m NW-SE
20m: 4L @ 35m and 24m fixed NE, 204BA @ 17m fixed NW
15m: 6L OWA @ 28m fixed NE
10m: 5L @ 19m fixed NE
10/15/20m: 3L SteppIR @ 41m
4L SteppIR @ 23m
TH3jr @ 13m fixed SE
Beverages: 230m NE, 160m NW & SE
Other: Homebrew SO2R box, TR4W log
Continent List
160 80 40 20 15 10 ALL
--- --- --- --- --- --- ---
NA calls = 11 27 29 42 35 35 179
SA calls = 5 11 23 54 46 105 244
Euro calls = 1 35 89 95 206 102 528
African calls = 0 2 2 6 2 9 21
Asian calls = 0 0 1 5 3 1 10
Japan calls = 0 2 35 8 36 2 83
Ocean calls = 0 1 12 10 10 11 44
Total calls = 17 78 191 220 338 265 1109
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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