Some ARRL DX CW notes from K1KI
1) The 1/4" of ice that coated the antennas and trees didn't help us get
off to a very good start. There was only one packet node and about 10
people as we started. Temperatures did go up after a few hours and by
midnight things were almost back to normal - except for the ice on the
driveway which frustrated at least one car that couldn't turn around
and had to back out of the driveway.
2) The local power company is finally fixing the source of our 4-year-old
noise to the southeast. The 69kv lines have been off for a couple of
weeks, and should be off until May as they replace 45-year-old
insulators and cables. Ten meters never sounded so good! Too bad the
only signals we heard most of the time were harmonics from nearby
stations on 20m.
3) We had five operating positions but only three keyers. Not everyone
was ready to use keyboards for everything which created a few awkward
moments.
4) Only four people were available at the start of the contest, but we
ended up with enough coverage the rest of the weekend since it was not
a VE QSO party during daylight hours on 80 and 40m.
5) Nice hearing JA1YDU on 15m late on Sunday. Too bad it took 15 minutes
and three sets of ears to figure out who we were hearing so weakly
(and not a chance of working him!).
6) We found a broken control cable to the 80m 4-square before the
contest, finally solving the mystery of why we had trouble busting
pileups in CQWW. This time 80m was much more fun. Nice to get good
after contest reports from S56A and Wo4o. The new inverted Vee at 85'
worked well into the Caribbean.
7) Very surprised to get 4 multipliers on 10m in the last half-hour. We
switched the 20m station to 10m for some quick QSOs. Also, it was
frustrating to hear many weak W3's working V51Z for 45 minutes on
Sunday while we never heard V51Z at all!
8) Our CT network was real stable this time for a change!
9) USA signals on 20m during the day were loud, making it tough to hear!
During the peak runs on 20m the 66/99' stack of 4L beams was superior
to the 5L at 130', but the high antenna was better as the band opened
and closed.
10) Looks like we got a slow start (understatement) on the first day with
W3LPL N2RM N3RS and K3LR all ahead of us. Even multi-2 K1AR and
KC1XX were 150-200 QSOs ahead of us Saturday afternoon (we beat them
by the end of the contest). We made up some ground on Sunday, and if
it were only a 3-day contest...
If we only counted the second day:
N2RM 1655 QSOs 90 mults
K1KI 1620 89
N3RS 1542 79
W3LPL 1521 81
K3LR 1335 77
11) Does anyone have QSL information for BY4A? We worked him on all
bands. :^) It did seem like there were more busted calls spotted
than in CQWW. We saw a few packet nasty grams back and forth between
the serious guns and those who are trying to help us out but manage
to get the callsigns wrong (because they don't hear the DX as well or
just miscopy the callsign). It just goes to show that if you take
packet gifts without question, the log checkers will find a lot of
busted calls in your log!
12) We've never worked a VK and ZL on 160 in a contest weekend before, but
we did this time. It was also real nice to have TA2BK and a UA9 call
in one after the other Saturday night around 04Z! The main 160m op
was K2KQ who had never operated on 160 before last September (and had
mostly been off the air for most of the previous 25 years). K1PI did
most of the 80m operating, K1KI/W2EQ/K1CC on 40, W1RM/W2EQ on 20,
KM1P/NQ1K on 15 and almost everyone took a spin around 10m to listen
to the hiss.
We had a great time - hope to see everyone in ARRL DX SSB which is coming
up much too soon! Go YCCC!!!
73 Tom K1KI
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E-mail: frenaye@pcnet.com
Tom Frenaye, K1KI, P O Box 386, West Suffield CT 06093 Phone: 860-668-5444
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