North American QSO Party, CW - January
Call: W8MK
Operator(s): W8MK
Station: W8MK
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: MI
Operating Time (hrs): 10
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 140 33
80: 201 41
40: 187 47
20: 136 39
15: 75 25
10: 17 9
-------------------
Total: 756 194 Total Score = 146,664
Club: Thumb Area Contesters
Team:
Comments:
Started out by changing my call in late December from K8BKM to W8MK. Practiced
using the new call and undoing years of muscle memory by participating in a
handful of CWops Mini-CWT contests prior to NAQP CW. I had my old call for about
24 years so getting used to W8MK was tricky.
I didn't sleep well the night before - too excited I guess. Got up early to run
a meteor scatter sked on 2M to try to work a new VUCC grid square in western KS.
Made a trip to the grocery store and hoped to take a nap pre-contest but that
didn't happen.
I knew going into the contest that W8MK would not be in any call history file or
contesting log. The former W8MK, now SK, Milton E. Kohl, of New Carlisle, OH was
not a contester. That made my first "outing" with the new call even
more challenging. To add to the challenge, I chose to honor Milton by using
"Milt" as my name. Well, not only is it not in any database, but Milt
just isn't a common name. I worked one other Milt the entire 10 hours. I had a
ton of fill request for my name and state. Combining MILT and MI was maybe not
the wisest choice. Despite the fill requests, hardly anyone asked me to repeat
my call. I perceived a big difference with a 1x2, especially when doing S&P.
I used pretty much the same strategy as I've used in past years. I've started on
the high bands to take advantage of daytime prop, but was pleasantly surprised
at how well 15 and 10 were open. I was very agile. Did mostly S&P the first
half of the contest on the high bands, and made a few early trips up to 40 to
work the locals before the band went long. 15 was in great shape. 10 was spotty
but the best in 5 years (only 17 Q's). 15 and 20 stayed open well past sunset so
I kept going back to look for multipliers. I beamed to AK and scanned the bands
but never worked it. 20 got really noisy late in the day, not sure why. The rest
of the evening was spent rotating between 40, 80, and 160. I'd run until my rate
fell, then ran the band S&P, then moved to another band and repeated. I
never sat anywhere for long.
In the end I shattered my previous NAQP record by 61 Q's and 36K points. I
attribute this mainly to better conditions on 10 and 15, and more multipliers.
The new call certainly helped, but was also a hinderance with all the fill
request. As the call works it's way into the contest logs and call history files
rates will improve and fill requests will diminish.
Had a great day/evening staying socially distanced and warm on a very cold
weekend.
Thanks for all the Q's.
73, Tom (aka Milt)
W8MK (ex-K8BKM)
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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