CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: WW2Y
Operator(s): WW2Y
Station: N2NT
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NJ
Operating Time (hrs): 42
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 28 11 18
80: 307 17 59
40: 917 25 76
20: 651 30 85
15: 639 29 83
10: 706 29 92
------------------------------
Total: 3248 141 413 Total Score = 5,221,450
Club: Frankford Radio Club
Comments:
Equipment: IC-781, Ten Tec Titan, and Wintest.
Antennas: 160m four-square of wire inverted Ls in trees
80m 6el broadside-endfire wire vertical array in trees and dipole.
beverages
40m 2el cushcraft and 3el wire beam
20m two yagi stack
15m 6/6 - 5/5 broadside stack
10m 6/6/6
KT34XA pointed SE most of the time
Thank you Andy, N2NT for giving me the opportunity to operate the best contest
on this planet from your fine station. Andy was operating as V47T in St.
Kitts.
It's been roughly 10 years since I've operated in a major multi-band DX CW
contest as a single op and I have to admit I was rusty at first. I began to
get
into the grove of things after several hours into the first night.
I started out in search and pounce mode on 15m picking off some Asian
multipliers before the band closed. I checked 10m early as well and didn't
hear
much of anything. Line noise to the west was present on 15m, but bearable. It
was worse on 10m, even detectable to the northeast direction. The noise
blanker
in the IC-781 seemed to work pretty well despite of the compromised RX dynamic
range it caused.
After about an hour I went to 20m and S/P for a while before going to run on
40m. I found a clear frequency and couldn't believe how loud the signals were
coming from all over Europe plus western Asian stations. The QSO rate was
decent and steady, which was better than expected. Later on I went to run on
80m and conditions were decent.
At about 0300Z I moved down to 160m and discovered that the 4 square wasn't
tuning up very well. I suspect one or more inverted L elements supported by
trees must have come down some time between two weeks ago and before the start
of the contest. The 80m 6el wire array seems to have survived. We have had
strong wind storms in recent weeks and Andy was on a business trip in Florida
for a week before going to St. Kitts. I didn't know where the wires were
located in the woods so I can inspect them. I managed to work some Europeans
on
topband despite of being relatively weak and I'm certain that a good portion
of
the TX power was being absorbed in the dump port of his feed system. I was
being careful by keeping the TX duty cycle low while calling stations since I
didn't know what his hybrid coupler's dump port power handling capacity. I ran
on 40m and 80m most of the time and stayed away from 160m more than usual as a
result. This was probably a good thing since I've could have easily been
sucked
into staying on 160m too long.
By 0730z I was not feeling well and went to sleep since I was recovering from
a
nasty head cold for days on end. I woke up at 1000z to S&P on 40 and
80
before the high bands broke lose. Roughly at 1200z I went straight to 10m and
found it wide open and began to have decent run for a long periods of time.
I've spent most of Saturday running on 10m until band closed into Europe. I'm
glad I've made this strategic decision because the European opening on Sunday
wasn't as good.
Early in the evening I had a good JA run on 15m for about an hour and then on
20m. Again, 40m was even better during the second night than the first. I
spent
most of my time there and spent little time on 80 and 160. I went to bed at
0630Z, long before European sunrise. Shame on me but I was feeling tired and
awful from coughing and hacking. I wanted to feel somewhat fresh and coherent
for the high band rush at 1130Z.
I started out to run on 20m for about 30 minutes before jumping to a
relatively fresh band, 15m. I think the 15m run had the highest hourly rates
during the entire weekend, but 10m, 20m, and 40m weren't that far behind. It
seemed that 15m closed to Europe earlier than expected and went to 20m early
in
the afternoon. Conditions on 20m were decent and I decided to run the two Yagi
stack out of phase at times to raise the main lobe up. Also, I found it
productive to aim the high antenna NNW to cover Asia while the lower antenna
aimed at Europe.
I spent some time in the late afternoon to hunt for multipliers and QSOs on 10
thru 20 with some success. I know I should've spent more time in search and
pounce mode since my multiplier count is extremely low.
I went to 40m just before sunset to run for rest of the contest and I was able
to keep a 100+ hour rate and have some juicy multipliers checked in from Asia,
Africa and Europe.
I could not believe how many stations from Russia, Ukraine, and most of
Eastern
Europe were on for this weekend. South American and Asian activity is high and
healthy too. Africa could have been a bit better though. I guess most things
have changed for the better in this regard for our great hobby of ours since
the past 10+ years.
I had a blast.
73,
Peter
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