IARU HF World Championship
Call: N3BB
Operator(s): N3BB
Station: N3BB
Class: SOABCW HP
QTH: stx
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Zones HQ Mults
-------------------------------------
160: 49 0 5 6
80: 200 0 15 18
40: 584 0 29 33
20: 838 0 27 35
15: 333 0 17 19
10: 8 0 3 0
-------------------------------------
Total: 2012 0 96 111 Total Score = 1,283,607
Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club
Comments:
The weather was perfect. Hot and dry. Nothing even near here the 24 hour contest
period.
All the equipment and antennas and amps and everything worked perfectly for me
following over a year of repairs and rebuilding, with a conversion to OB yagis,
which were used on 15 and 10. I still have the working phased array on 20 and it
really came through on the money band. Not a single problem. The station was
great. Not sure about the operator. I tried hard. Took three breaks of 10-15
mins to eat a bit and check on Diana and talk with our son when he was checking
on me once. All in all, w/out looking at times with no contacts for a bit, my
swag would be 35-45 mins total without contacts the entire 24 hour stretch. The
rates were pretty good. Worked decently hard at SO2Ring, although that is really
hard over long stretches, especially when the main run band is going hot and
heavy. Did much less trying to move mults, compared with previous years. Tried
to move only two mults that called me. Never heard one guy (the move was Zone
11 on 160) and the other move was successful: K1ZZ from 40 to 80. Dave is a
mult in the IARU (AC). So I was not at all "move active" but all in
all, it all worked out well.
There was major league competition in W5 for this thing, with K5GN (at NR5M?)
and someone at WX0B (not sure of op, as haven't see any postings to 3830 yet).
Also, AD5A here was active not far from here with Mike's new superstation. With
Gator moving into Central Texas, it will be hard to win this area in anything!
K5TR was every where, but they were M/S, so not in my category.
The conditions were very good, even with a virtual skunk-out on 10 meters. I
might have missed something on 10, if it happened, but I did listen often. That
band was a fairly total washout with me as no mults at all and only three zones
worked (6-7-8). I'm pretty sure that some people got VE3 (zone 4) and VE7 (zone
2) or KH6 (zone 61) but I never heard anything when I was listening. There have
been years past when I missed Zone 6 (CA, etc) but made one contact this year,
so got Zone 6 at least.
Twenty meters was the go-to band. Remarkable propagation at times worldwide. My
reasonably good antennas on 20 helped me. Fifteen was decent. The new OB yagis
played well there and are very "quiet" for sure. There were many QSOs
made when the other station was ESP at best! Forty meters yielded a fantastic,
fantastic JA run. It just flowed on and on with loud signals, then quickly shut
down. Did the MUF fall below 7 MHz? That's my only explanation. It came back a
very little near sunrise. But it was one of my best ever JA runs. I had turned
the big Telrex to JA in the middle of the night after the EU sunrise, standing
in the back yard at around 2:30 a.m. using a flashlight to confirm the
directions, since the motor turns, but the indicator on the Create got zapped
in the 2014 storms. That's not fixed yet, but I only position the Telrex on
EU/NE USA normally. So I could work around that. That large antenna with the
significant elevation drop is just killer good to both EU and JA!
I got some very nice mults that called me on 80, especially to A/P in the
morning after the JA run on 40 stopped. In general, I called CQ a lot of the
time, while SO2R-ing for mults and contacts on the second radio. Hope that it
was the proper strategy. Several good mults called me during CQ runs, but you
never know what you are missing by not tuning for them as well.
A serious contest effort is hard to explain to anyone who has not done it. To
sit there, especially on Morse, and communicate so quickly, but so effectively,
with thousands all around the world, and yet feel a spirit of community when the
call signs flow into your ears is amazing. I recall K1DG once saying, "It's
what we do!" I suppose that is on the mark as well as anything. I know that
most of us will never experience driving a NASCAR or F1 race car, and knowing
our competitors, or playing the pro-tennis circuit (Wimbledon is on my mind)
and cooperating and competing with our peer group, but it must similar to those
that take contesting seriously.
The IARU is a great contest. Thanks for the support from ARRL and the IARU, and
thanks for the terrific CW operators worldwide who make this such a treat ...
difficult and challenging ... but a memorable treat at that!
73, Jim N3BB
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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