IARU HF World Championship
Call: N7AP
Operator(s): K8IA N7RQ
Station: K8IA/N7RQ
Class: M/S HP
QTH: Arizona USA
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Zones HQ Mults
-------------------------------------
160: 15 0 5 1
80: 100 0 9 3
40: 558 221 34 36
20: 400 471 31 37
15: 126 3 14 7
10: 2 0 2 0
-------------------------------------
Total: 1201 695 95 84 Total Score = 1,018,868
Club: Arizona Outlaws Contest Club
Comments:
A decision by Sandy N7RQ to resurrect her N7AP club callsign, from pre-AOCC
time, and to generate some demand for issuing the unique N7AP QSL cards (see
QRZ), lead us to a casual IARU HF M/S effort. That was her and I from our home
and N7AT AOCC Hideout.
We decided from the onset that this would be a casual M/S. One radio and op at a
time, no particular contest strategies, band strategies, multiplier strategies
nor schedule. One person in the shack doing his/her operating for a few hours at
a time. No analyzing the bands every ten minutes and skipping around the
spectrum to take advantage of the openings to be within the ten minute rule for
M/S. Just a good time doing a contest together, with zero pressure to put in a
competitive score. After all, there is no club competition in IARU HF.
Sandy did all of the ssb operating and I did all the cw operating. Our
preference modes. Lots of short breaks and a few longer ones. Here are our
individual comments.
(Sandy N7RQ - Best hour was 171 q's)
"Conditions on SSB were especially challenging during the first 12 hours
when we experienced what seemed like meteor-shower QSB and spotlight propagation
alternating with periods of high absorption. Many repeats were necessary, but
people were kind and patient. Europe was open to Arizona far longer than
expected, in short spurts, which made for some late afternoon fun on 20 meters.
We were delighted at the large number of callers who were not regular
contesters. Unfortunately, I never heard the Y8 WRTC2018 stations, but were
able to work many of the HQ and administrative stations. Also absent were the
many JA, Pacific, Caribbean, and Central and South America stations normally
heard."
(Bob K8IA - Best hour was 146 q's)
I always open this contest on 40m. The first hour always has a great mix of east
Asia, USA and Pacific stations. This was no exception and accounted for my best
hour. Unfortunately, things went somewhat downhill after that, but the low
K-index made things bearable. As Sandy mentioned, the rapid QSB was a challenge,
not only dropping the usual dit or dah but whole letters. Lots of repeats were
some of my day. As expected, it was a 20m + 40m contest. 10 was near useless and
getting trapped there for the ten minute minimum was not good. 15 may have been
ok Saturday morning, I dunno, but 20 was stroking well so no reason to lower
rates by going there then. 80/160 were both filled with our usual monsoon season
noise and were productive for a short while, then back to the real action on 40.
I worked a bunch of the Y8 stations on both 20 and 40. I haven't made a count
yet, but I would say maybe 30-35 Y8's on 20m and maybe a dozen on 40m. I'll
count later. All were quite weak here in the west, but their exceptional
operating skills made qso's with them very fast.
I'll issue a Cabrillo Stats sheet later this week, to the AOCC folks.
Next up here is the annual monsoon related near-shutdown of the contest station.
Those monsoon storms can develop quickly and unpredictably, and have caused a
number of summer contests here to be truncated way early.
Next "for sure" multi-op contest will be CQWW DX SSB in late October!
Tnx to all for the qso's and big thumbs up to the organizers of WRTC2018. That
element of operation makes IARU HF very exciting every four years!
73, Bob K8IA
Arizona Outlaws Contest Club
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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