CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: W1NN
Operator(s): W1NN
Station: W1NN
Class: SOAB LP
Class Overlay: TB-Wires
QTH: OH
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 44
40: 379
20: 591
15: 100
10: 9
------------
Total: 1123 Prefixes = 558 Total Score = 1,589,184
Club: North Coast Contesters
Comments:
For four of the last six years, I operated this contest from rental properties
in Europe using simple dipoles and a single K3 radio. Conclusion: it is a lot
easier to do well in this contest from Eueope. In every case, I made a lot more
contacts and worked more multipliers from Europe than I can make from my better
equipped home station.
The main difference seems to be that it is a lot easier to run effectively in
Europe with so many countries and stations packed into a relatively small area,
and you can make better use of bands like 80 and 15 even during low sunspot
periods. This year I tried and tried to run but I guess that about 80% of my
contacts were S&P. I very nearly wore out the main dial on my radio. It
seemed like it was more work to log stations and stay in the chair this year.
A few problems: toward the end of the first day, I noticed that my computer
clock skipped one hour ahead, so several hours of operating are showing the
wrong time. I'll have to sort this out. Then the computer input jack on the K3
stopped working, requiring a switch of radios and the loss of SO2R. For some
reason, black ants decided to raid my radio room and I ended up killing about 20
of the little pests throughout the weekend. They seem to love climbing up to
the second floor on my coax. A terrible thunderstorm late Saturday afternoon
required a QRT and caused lots of QRN on the low bands throughout the weekend.
On the positive side, I had fun, conditions on 20 and 40 were good and there was
a lot of activity. I can't believe some of the huge QSO numbers I was hearing.
Personally I work everyone I hear but in general the guys with unique prefixes
seemed to have considerably higher numbers. Would I do better with an unusual
prefix? (W8 and K8 were some of the rarer prefixes this year.)
No Asia worked (except for 4X and 9K, which should not be put into the same
bucket as JA, HL, BV, etc. IMHO). I heard JH4UYB on 40 and 20, JE6RPM (op
JH5GHM) working EU on 20, and 9M6NA (op JE1JKL) on 40, but none of them could
hear me (I did get a few ? from 'GHM tho).
Station: two K3 radios; small tribander at 35 feet fixed on Europe, dipoles for
40 and 80 at around 60 feet.
73, Hal W1NN
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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