I think conditions were horrible. Compounding the poor propagation
are the very silly power multipliers that seem to cause most
stations to operate with low power.
I made just over 2000 points (no way to know for sure, because I
get a double points multiplier for contacts with the few dozen QRP
stations I worked).
I only had 450 contacts in ten hours or so of operating. Although
much of the time was spent learning how to use the keyer and
other stuff in NA (and that may have cost me contacts), I still don't
think activity was all that good. The many times I swept the band
looking for new contacts there were only perhaps 50 or 100
readable signals on at any one sweep.
The longest distance contact was with two VK6 stations who are
normally over S9 on good mornings but they were only about S2-5
in the contest, barely out of the noise floor here.
I've concluded my station is much too difficult to operate single op
with so many knobs and switches. Tuning the receiver, picking the
best receiving direction on a very short call and exchange, and
typing in the information took me about two hours or more to get
down to a system. Using wide RX bandwidth helps with tuning, but
costs S/N on weak signals. Splitting the receivers in different
directions in each ear helps fill in directions, but at the cost of
copying stations near or in the noise.
Doubling the filter BW from 250 Hz to 500 Hz costs about 3dB in
S/N, and splitting directions on the receiver costs another few dB in
perceived S/N and takes away the diversity that greatly reduces
effects of fading.
73, Tom W8JI
W8JI@contesting.com
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