CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB
Call: N8II
Operator(s): N8II
Station: N8II
Class: SOSB/15 HP
QTH: WV
Operating Time (hrs): 21
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160:
80:
40:
20:
15: 773 29 116
10:
------------------------------
Total: 773 29 116 Total Score = 310,445
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
The sun giveth and the sun taketh away pretty well sums up the weekend,
Sunday was a bust with K index as high as 4 and and the bands are still
El Stinko as of Monday evening. I was trying to be a good PVRC member and
concentrate efforts on SS, so I chose 15 single band. It's a lot
different place with a band full of signals than on an average day. I
was off the week of Oct 8th and several days had huge pile-ups over
8-10 deep calling me around 14-17Z from Eu as I was one of the few ops
active; the WW saw a reversal fortune for sure. I also worked AT6MYL in
Mumbai, India the weekend before the contest running barefoot, sigs over
S9, no central Asians even heard in the WW, let alone a RA9.
Throughout the weekend intermittent Sporadic E enhanced DX propagation.
During the first 2 hours ther was Es to the south and west without which
there wouldn't have been much of any DX to work and there was a good
opening to VE1/9 as well. I didn't attempt to run the VE's concentrating
on the DX. By 0130 SA was getting pretty weak; at 0250Z E51JD was worked;
he and VK9NS were my only semi-rare countries worked the first evening.
ZL's were on in relative abundance. Last QSO was YV4A at 02Z and the same
ZL's were still around. 48 Q's/10 zones were worked, much better than
expected.
I made it to the shack at 1115Z and the band literally sprang to life
to Eu at 1120 no doubt due to some helpful Es to VE1 again. I knew better
than to try and run thru the Eu working Eu curtain til sigs were available
from a large area and loud. I caught PVRC'er Hal at 4X0WV and found ST2T
along with 5B/AJ2O, SV9COL, 3DA0WW, and 3V6T. ES5TV did a good job pulling
out my S2 signal thru the crud. Starting around 1215 signals acutally went
down to the point where there wasn't much new to work; very few Q's were
in run mode.
About 13Z, the band opened well, but running remained difficult. There
was a huge amount of jockeying for a good run frequency and a lot of
blatant attempts to take my run frequency from both EU and NA; 15 was no
better than the zoo on 20. It wasn't til about 14Z that I was able to hold
a run frequency for more than 10-15 minutes. I had to take off a total
of 45 minutes during the 1420-1513Z time frame to help with a service man
which was unavoidable, and after that I knew I was hopelessly behind. My
best rate hour was 15Z where 92 Q's were made in 47 minutes and 9H1DE
+ HB0/HB9AON called in during my run. Condx continued to be better than
expected during the 17Z (worked 88 Q's) and 18Z hour. Many thanks to
EA8/DH6FAW who was quite loud for giving me a nice spot to run around
21328 when he went QRT. A few loud Scandinavians/RK2FWA were
worked until around 1830Z. I could only run a few stations after I returned
from a 30 minute break at 19Z, but there were still plenty of loud sigs
from the Mediterranean area. The smallest country with the biggest
presence was definitely CT3 with booming signals thru the afternoon.
Madeira has become a real hotbed of contest activity. A total of 18
Q's were made with zone 33 about half of which were CT3. My last Eu
worked was IM0/IK0FKB at 2046Z; it was amazing how late the Eu/Af
signals held in there probably aided by Es and auroral E.
My first JA was JA7YRR at 2233Z, but the band didn't open well til over an
hour past sunset at 2320Z when I fould JA7NVD over S9 and a good 20 db or
so louder than any JA before! Suddenly the band was full of decent
strength JA's. I had some good luck easily working AH2C and getting weak
DX6M. Then I was calling a weak JA1 who couldn't copy me when JR3IIR and
a UA0 called me for my only Asiatic Russian QSO of the contest. By 2345
the JA's were rapidly weakening, a short opening to say the least. S&P
produced a better rate than trying to run them.
Sunday can best be described as contest torture. I did find about 11 more
countries but only managed at total of 91 QSO's all day. Best hour was
a whopping 16 Q's at 17Z when there was a weak opening to CT/EA/I only.
I only found about 10 new Eu Q's all day.
On a positive note the only pile-ups I didn't break were T70A and 5R8GZ
(no stateside heard working him) both of which had many Eu callers. Some
of the big ones were easy to plow thru. Thanks for the Q's and see you
from "rare WV" in both modes of SS.
QSO's per zone: 14 - 281, 15 - 153, 20 - 19, 16 only 7, 25 - 29, 30 - 8,
zone 32 - 11, 38 - 8, 8 - 36, 9 - 22, 11 - 37, 13 - 33.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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