ARRL DX Contest, CW
Call: N8II
Operator(s): N8II
Station: N8II
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: WV
Operating Time (hrs): 29.4
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 41 30
80: 156 39
40: 225 63
20: 624 93
15: 933 100
10: 845 79
-------------------
Total: 2824 404 Total Score = 3,426,476
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
Last year was fun, this year closer to like work except for the first hours and
a few times afterwards. RBN has completely changed the dynamic and flow of
contest operating and operating skills in pile ups have been dumbed down to an
all time low in my opinion. Contesting is more than just point, click, shoot
and automatically get results. If everyone is doing the same thing it does not
work well for anybody. I generated some huge pile ups, way too big and nearly
all on the same frequency for any human to work through efficiently. If I was
on a band where EU was not skipping over EU, they had a lot of trouble hearing
me mainly because of a nearly complete lack of discipline and operators calling
nearly constantly and intentionally calling during a QSO. I never quit on a pile
up, but was tempted to do so several times. Switching to a new frequency is not
an option because RBN finds you where ever you go. It probably cost me at least
150 QSO's. The worst was Saturday around sunrise on 20 meters; EU signals were
loud and SE Asia was booming in, but even sending the worked station's call
twice only resulted in an answer about half the time! But during that run with
the antenna just barely north of EU, I could easily pick out E20, BG2, YB, and
yes even Antarctica long path calling thru the EU drone. Even 15 meters was a
problem being heard thru the pile up. I feel really sorry for the poor guy in a
rare state or rare DX who has marginal running skills; most of them have hung up
the key by now.
OK, so the take home lessons are: never call during a QSO, and do not call
zero beat to everyone else in a big pile up unless you know you are too loud to
be missed. It is probably best to call 50-150 Hz high or 50-100 Hz low. If I am
listening on the high side, I will never hear you on the low side, so you have
to LISTEN, use your brain, and adjust to get in the log quickly. Still having
trouble? Save the frequency in a memory or 2nd VFO and come back later.
Getting to the contest, 10 was open to JA, but not well enough to run
stations at the opening gun. I managed to put RT0 and DU in the log, and Hawaii
was loud.
I worked more JA's in the first 25 minutes on 10 than the rest of the contest
on 10 by far. 15 was in great shape to East Asia from the start until past 01Z.
When I started running, the first QSO was a JW (nice RBN surprise!?) and UA0's
plus VR2, SK3, and OG6 all called in along with loud JA's. 20 from 01Z past 02Z
was open to nearly everywhere except more distant parts of OC and parts of EU.
But, I was quite surprised to log HA, DL, G, OZ, EW and JW totaling over a
dozen EU countries. It was nice to see a really rare AF country take part, Z8,
along with all of the usual west coastal hot spots and ZS. The number of
Caribbean/Central America countries active seemed down from the past years
average, but there were some very good ops there as usual. For as good as
conditions were, activity was pretty low, most EU were on 40 and lower. I
stayed on 20 too long, but it was too much fun to leave and had decided to try
and have fun rather than maximize score. 5R8 was last QSO! After a short snack,
a check of 160 at 03Z revealed the best 160 conditions of the contest. NA
stations were running EU and the EU big guns were an easy QSO for me. I was
able to run a few EU for about 10 minutes, and I am pretty sure the band score
on 160 is a personal best for me in ARDX. The most distant QSO's were HC and
RW7. 80 did not disappoint, and I had a good run (hard to sort out fairly weak
watery stations all calling on same frequency) with no huge rare DX surprises.
It was great to hear so many Ukrainians and Russians on 80 and all bands!
Conditions were outstanding to UR/UA6 on 80. I was afraid that the war might
have a very negative impact on activity.
The next morning, after a quick scan of 160 and 80 without much luck, I went
to 15 which just seemed to be opening well enough for running good rates at
1150Z. The number of callers were very uneven with large pile ups interspersed
with having to hit the CQ button. I sat there thinking, I guess tuning a VFO is
turning into a lost art! Conditions were not perfect and some areas were weak.
UA/UR did not appear in numbers until around 1230Z. Ten was not open to EU
until very late: I made a quick check at 1325Z and 5 Q's later was back at it
on 15 for some of my best rates. EU signals on 15 were so loud and the callers
never stopped, so I had to guess that 10 was still quite poor. Finally at
1450Z, I moved up to 10 which seemed to just be opening well to portions of EU,
not to all. I had my best rate at 169/hour. 10 never did open well Saturday to
Scandinavia or UA1-4. I stayed with 10 until 1725, then down to 20 where the EU
drone of callers hit immediately with EU to EU QRM. The rest of the the contest
was fairly normal. 15 was great to Asia for a long stretch starting before
2130Z and continuing well into the evening. 10 sounded really lonely and poor
when it was not open to EU, Caribbean and JA QSO's were way below last year and
no VK's were heard, but ZL was loud at times. A vestige of loud big gun EU
stations lasted on 15 right thru the beginning of JA's both days with Sunday
better. 40 was the star of the evening show with best signals from south EU
over 90 minutes past my sunset through the whole evening. 160 was pretty poor
to EU, but I managed two new all time band countries, LU and TI9. The LU was
pretty loud.
On Sunday things were closer to back to good old days normal for 10 on Sunday
with loud EU at 1320Z. Two VU's and a UN7 called in along with SM,LA, and OH's
that were out in the cold Saturday.
Everyone is tired of winter, especially me! I spent all afternoon Friday
running around and doing chores before Saturday's snow. Luckily the predicted
freezing rain was a nil here due to it staying cold Saturday. Sunday at 1825Z
was lunch break followed by snow shoveling (hard work!)and dog walking which
took 100 minutes out of EU running on 20; only 624 Q's this year vs. 801 last
year. My score was nearly identical to last year when I operated LP and 4 hours
longer. 10M Q's were down by about 170 and could have been much worse. 15 was up
130 Q's from last year. 160 countries were up from 14 to 30 this year, but I did
poorer with mults on 80, due to more running and less time spent. 40 was nearly
the same.
I'm not sure what the future holds for me seriously operating in DX contests;
it was pretty frustrating dealing with the unruly EU pile ups and pretty
mentally draining. Thanks for the Q's and sorry for the wait to log me for some
long stretches, you can only do what you can do.
73, Jeff
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