CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2019
Call: N3CW
Operator(s): N3CW
Station: N3CW
Class: SO(A)AB HP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 38 11 23
80: 98 18 56
40: 193 25 91
20: 367 27 117
15: 115 21 71
10: 26 9 18
------------------------------
Total: 837 111 376 Total Score = 1,103,055
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
After this contest I think I am ok with sunspot minimums! It’s nice having
several active bands to pick from, even if activity levels on 10 and 15 meters
don’t quite rival those of earlier sunspot cycles. I found the upper part of
20 meters above the digital zone to be a goldmine for multipliers. This was by
choice not a running contest for me, but I did see several of the top single-op
stations setting up camp way high in the bands to get their runs going. There
was a nice opening to South America Saturday on 10 meters; that made up the bulk
of my 10 meter totals. I also was able to work ZM4T around 2PM during this
South America opening via what I assume was a skewed path of some sort.
My main HF antenna is a Steppir, and its ability to instantly switch direction
180 degrees is a real blessing in this contest. I frequently went from working
South Americans to working Europeans while trying to get my contact totals up to
something respectable, and gave the 180 degree reversal button a good
reliability test. The downside to the 180 degree setting is that sometimes you
forget it is enabled. This happened on Sunday around 2PM local time when I
thought I was beaming KH6LC, but noticed a considerable backscatter effect on
his signal – he was almost uncopyable in fact. That effect totally went away
when I beamed him directly. Of course propagation path effects are nothing new,
but the KH6LC signal delay/backscatter when listening longpath was so pronounced
I actually recorded about half a minute of it while changing the Steppir 180
degree selection.
With a couple hours left to operate on Sunday evening, I was not enjoying the
noise level and inability to work very much on the lower bands. Must be quite a
challenge to pull things out of the noise on the European end. But thankfully 20
meters and even 15 meters for a short time provided many more Qs from our South
American and Canadian friends, if you remember to go back and check those bands
late in the afternoon even when you think you have worked everyone there. As a
bonus there seemed to be a short 20 meter window Sunday where the JA stations
were much easier to work than on Saturday.
Station equipment worked pretty much flawlessly, except that early on I had an
infrequent anomaly where my K3 PTT would hang and not switch back to receive for
about a second or two. I have recently added more RF amplifier capability, and
I initially thought I had an RF in the shack issue. So I added a few snap-on
ferrites to some critical places, with no effect. I probably should also
revisit the need for feedline baluns, as that’s the proper fix for RF problems
in the shack if indeed I have any of that. But what seemed to have solved the
problem was an N1MM setup selection where I had “enable both hardware and
software PTT” checked in the K3 COMM port setup. Apparently you do not want
this when using a microHAM microKeyer as I do. After unchecking that option the
PTT hang issue went away.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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