North American QSO Party, CW - August
Call: K6DAJ
Operator(s): K6DAJ
Station: N6RO
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 10
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 32 12
80: 81 30
40: 248 47
20: 400 51
15: 93 35
10: 2 1
-------------------
Total: 856 176 Total Score = 150,656
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Team: NCCC Team #1
Comments:
The sun giveth and the sun taketh away. As the Beach Boys said, "The West
Coast has the sunshine." Since time immemorial, W. coast summer NAQP
philosophers have debated whether it's better to take a break at the end, when
many hip Easterners have quit, or earlier, to get more 80/160 mults. I decided
to take a 1/2 hour at the end, and the rest before dark, mainly because I
couldn't stand to leave 20m along for so long. But it was painful to quit at
5:30z just as 160 and 80 were really opening up. I wish they all could be
California Qs.
This was my first serious SO in a CW NAQP. I've been gearing up for this one
for some time, practicing in CWTs and with simulators. My goals were simple: Do
as well as I could, improve my contest skills, relax (to the extent possible)
and have unbounded fun with the mode that says "ham radio" like no
other. For much of the contest, I did interleaved QSOs with two keyboards. and
it worked smoothly most of the time, though I need more practice on dealing with
pileups in that context.
I arrived at the pastoral Radio Oakley QTH on a beautiful morning, watched some
hawks sitting on the boom of the top 20m Yagi, and then sat down to listen to
10m for signs of life. At T minus 10 minutes, I worked a station from MT, but by
the contest start, he had faded, and there was just a couple locals.
With so many daylight hours out here, 15m is an important band, but it was
difficult from the start, with sketchy propagation. Having experienced an
unusually poor NS last Thursday, I should have seen this coming, but I didn't
want to leave mults on the table, so I beat my head against it. More seasoned
NAQP'ers probably saw the writing on the wall and moved on. Instead, I
interleaved QSOs on 20/15 for the first two hours, whereas I perhaps should have
ran on 20 and S&P'ed on 15 for higher rates. Had to take a break earlier
than planned so missed the final demise of 15, but maybe for the best, as when I
finally focused on 20 exclusively, the rate meter shot up and I ran for most of
the afternoon, with occasional S&P sweeps.
First 40m Q (K9CT) was at 2230. From 0000 to 0200, alternated interleaving
40/20, and S&P/run, with the best period on 40m during 0200-0400, with
wonderfully *loud* signals, finally. Then, right in the middle of this, the
computer shut down! What the heck happened? When attempting to press
<ALT>U to change N1MM+ from S&P to Run, I inadvertently pressed the
<WINDOWS>-U instead (or perhaps <ALT><WINDOWS>-U or some other
combination). Not sure if that's what caused it, but the next thing I knew, the
screen went blank and it said "Windows Shutting Down"!
Rebooted, and set everything up again. Luckily, Ken was around to remind me of
several programs I didn't remember to start up (Flex CAT & AG). Lost about 5
minutes on that, but what took longer was to settle my nerves again.
Determined to make 400 Qs on 20m (an artifact of having 10 fingers), I stayed on
20m a bit long. Finally made it to 80m five minutes before sundown (first Q with
W6SX) at 0310z, and did 80/40, then 80/160. The 160m four-square played well
and managed to reach MS and NY (W2FU). Could really have used that last 1/2
hour.
Never heard RI, nor AB, NB, NS, NT, NU, PE, YT.
Thanks to Ken (N6RO) for all his advice/tutelage/tuna-fish-casserole, and for
the team at RO for recent station upgrades and maintenance. Special thanks to
Chris (N6WM) for resurrecting the Flex after a corrupted SD card, and Gary
(NA6O) who has done this contest in recent years and kindly stepped aside this
time.
Excerpts from CBS:
-------------- Q S O R a t e S u m m a r y ---------------------
Hour 160 80 40 20 15 10 Rate Total Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1800 0 0 0 19 51 2 72 72 8.4
1900 0 0 0 65 32 0 97 169 19.7
2000 0 0 0 46 8 0 54 223 26.1
2100 0 0 0 79 2 0 81 304 35.5
2200 0 0 11 74 0 0 85 389 45.4
2300 0 0 13 35 0 0 48 437 51.1
0000 0 0 25 47 0 0 72 509 59.5
0100 0 0 22 21 0 0 43 552 64.5
0200 0 0 65 14 0 0 79 631 73.7
0300 0 26 82 0 0 0 108 739 86.3
0400 10 39 30 0 0 0 79 818 95.6
0500 22 16 0 0 0 0 38 856 100.0
------------------------------------------------------
Total 32 81 248 400 93 2 856
Gross QSOs=878 Dupes=22 Net QSOs=856
Unique callsigns worked = 619
The best 60 minute rate was 110/hour from 0254 to 0353
The best 30 minute rate was 118/hour from 0255 to 0324
The best 10 minute rate was 138/hour from 1858 to 1907
The best 1 minute rates were:
5 QSOs/minute 2 times.
4 QSOs/minute 6 times.
3 QSOs/minute 70 times.
2 QSOs/minute 188 times.
1 QSOs/minute 236 times.
There were 305 band changes and 177 (20.7%) probable 2nd radio QSOs.
------------ M u l t i p l i e r S u m m a r y ------------
Mult 160 80 40 20 15 10 Total Pct
-------------------------------------------------------------
CA 17 25 15 12 10 2 81 9.5
TX 2 3 16 32 1 0 54 6.3
IL 2 0 15 21 5 0 43 5.0
VA 0 2 12 21 5 0 40 4.7
OH 1 1 10 22 5 0 39 4.6
CO 2 1 11 18 5 0 37 4.3
ON 0 1 5 19 9 0 34 4.0
PA 0 2 5 18 7 0 32 3.7
MD 0 3 10 14 2 0 29 3.4
IN 1 2 6 13 5 0 27 3.2
TN 1 3 3 12 7 0 26 3.0
WA 0 7 14 1 1 0 23 2.7
NY 1 1 4 10 5 0 21 2.5
FL 0 1 8 12 0 0 21 2.5
MA 0 1 7 12 1 0 21 2.5
MT 2 2 9 5 1 0 19 2.2
NC 0 1 5 9 3 0 18 2.1
MN 0 1 6 11 0 0 18 2.1
KS 0 4 6 7 1 0 18 2.1
MI 0 0 7 8 2 0 17 2.0
WI 0 1 4 11 1 0 17 2.0
AZ 0 2 7 5 1 0 15 1.8
OR 1 7 7 0 0 0 15 1.8
GA 0 1 6 6 1 0 14 1.6
AL 0 1 3 7 1 0 12 1.4
MO 0 1 3 8 0 0 12 1.4
SC 0 0 2 8 1 0 11 1.3
IA 0 1 3 6 1 0 11 1.3
KY 0 0 0 9 1 0 10 1.2
NJ 0 0 3 7 0 0 10 1.2
OK 0 1 4 5 0 0 10 1.2
CT 0 0 3 4 2 0 9 1.1
BC 0 1 4 3 0 0 8 0.9
MS 1 0 1 6 0 0 8 0.9
HI 0 0 3 2 1 0 6 0.7
NH 0 1 0 5 0 0 6 0.7
WY 0 0 2 4 0 0 6 0.7
NM 0 0 1 4 1 0 6 0.7
ID 1 0 5 0 0 0 6 0.7
SD 0 0 2 2 1 0 5 0.6
NV 0 2 1 2 0 0 5 0.6
AR 0 0 1 3 0 0 4 0.5
NE 0 0 1 2 0 0 3 0.4
LA 0 0 1 2 0 0 3 0.4
MB 0 0 1 2 0 0 3 0.4
WV 0 0 0 2 1 0 3 0.4
UT 0 0 3 0 0 0 3 0.4
QC 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 0.2
DE 0 0 1 0 1 0 2 0.2
SK 0 1 0 0 1 0 2 0.2
8P 0 0 0 1 1 0 2 0.2
ND 0 0 1 1 0 0 2 0.2
VT 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0.1
DC 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.1
KP2 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0.1
HP 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.1
NL 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.1
AK 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0.1
ME 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0.1
------------------------------------------------------
Total 32 81 248 400 93 2 856
Multi-band QSOs
---------------
1 bands 437
2 bands 140
3 bands 30
4 bands 11
5 bands 1
6 bands 0
------- S i n g l e B a n d Q S O s ------
Band 160 80 40 20 15 10
----------------------------------------------
QSOs 10 27 119 251 30 0
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