CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: PI4TUE
Operator(s): ON9CC PA0SHY PA3FGA PA4AO PA5YL PC5A PE2HD
Station: PI4TUE
Class: M/S HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 47.25
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80: 114
40: 541
20: 904
15: 919
10: 171
------------
Total: 2649 Prefixes = 1084 Total Score = 6,484,488
Club: Bavarian Contest Club
Comments:
Somehow faith decided that the last MS activity of PI4TUE in its current station
setting was not the ARI but the WPX CW contest; our favorite mode anyway. Also
the last opportunity to get the 40MDY3 tuned properly.
A contest without goals is less fun so we aimed for the Dutch QSO, score and or
WPX records, which are: 2565 (PA6WPX-1992), 4.8M (PI4DEC-2002) and 856
(PI4DEC-2002). Our personal best records: 2237 (2010) 3.9M (2006) and 794
(2006).
Simulations indicated we had to make the radiator of the 3 EL 40M yagi 36cm
longer to lower the resonance from 7250 to 7065 kHz without changing the
pattern too much. Changing also the other two elements was no option since we
could not reach those elements without lowering the whole antenna. After
Rens-PA3FGA, Claudia-PD5AX and Aurelio-PC5A spent yet another afternoon on our
roof at 58M (190FT) agl in calm and sunny weather the resonance had dropped to
7137kHz, but with a bandwidth of only 25kHz => not usable for the contest,
SIGH... It just was not meant to be. Next stop of that antenna is Lampedusa in
October this year.
So, to keep the spirits up we went out for our traditional pre-contest dinner.
That certainly helped a lot. We walked back admiring the awesome sight of that
3 EL 40M yagi on its 15M (50FT) tower on top of the 200FT building, discussing
if we could at least use it for RX only. We concluded also that was not going
to happen since we needed a TX/RX relay to protect the RX port of the Orion
when the mult station would be transmitting.
Right on time Frank-ON9CC and Aurelio-PC5A started the contest in the same
setting as for both the ARRL contests, a run and an in-band mult station
connected to an interlock system. At sunrise we were on par with prefixes
worked and QSO's against 2010. From that point onwards however the gap in
number of prefixes increased to the very end. What worried us was the number of
QSO's. We needed to make that gap bigger in order to attack the national record.
10M didn't help, conditions were just poor. 15M and 20M made up for that but we
hardly could get any runs going. Meanwhile we often did S&P on both
stations. This had a positive effect on the number of WPX's and QSO's. To
celebrate breaking our personal record score we had cake and prosecco around 1
am Sunday... jummie. During the following night hours we broke the first record
(859 WPX's at 0400Z )but the gap in QSO's got smaller and smaller and leveled
off to the 2010 numbers up and until 15Z. Then finally we got some small runs
going on 15M and 20M. At 15Z we broke the national score record by crossing the
5M mark. The number of QSO's at that time was around 2250. I estimated we needed
at least 400 more QSO's before the end to crack the final record. At 0115 Monday
morning local time we pulled the plug when the QSO count said 2650; yes we
can... the tri-bander & wires station did it one last time :-)
We don't know if and in what form PI4TUE will return but for now, thank you all
for 20+ years of thrilling fun!
Best 73 on behalf of the ESRAC Contest Team
-- Aurelio, PC5A
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