CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: WC1M
Operator(s):
Station:
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 41
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
-------------------------------
160: 12 6 8
80: 60 15 37
40: 416 22 78
20: 734 32 93
15: 461 24 85
10: 556 27 83
-------------------------------
Total: 2239 126 384 = 3,291,030
Club/Team: YCCC
Comments:
Antennas:
160M - trapped vee @65'
80M - delta loop @75', trapped vee @65'
40M - full-size 4-square w/260 radials
20M - 4-el 30' boom @70', C3E @50'
15M - 5-el 24' boom @50', C3E @50'
10M - C3E @50'
580' NE beverage
All yagis on separate tubular towers
Equipment:
FT-1000D + Alpha 87A, FT-1000MP + Acom 2000A, Writelog, TopTen band decoders
and switches.
The joke going around is that there are more words in my soapbox comments than
QSOs in my log. It's true -- I've always been a more prolofic writer than
contester. I strive to get my QSO count above the word count, but still fall
short. At least my point total is higher! I do this because I like to go over
what happened when it's still fresh in my mind. Maybe something I discover this
time will help my score next time. I also do it in case there are other top ten
wannabees out there who might benefit from the experience of someone who is
still learning the game and doesn't have a lot of aluminum high in the sky.
There: over 120 words and nothing about the contest yet. The word count is now
closing in on my zone count...
I was going to begin with the "best of times, worst of times" line, but K5ZD
got there first (kind of like what he does on the radio.) It was truly a Tale
of Two Contests, in which half the time I felt like a Dickens street urchin and
the other half I was swimming in riches. It was the most difficult contest I've
done since getting serious about this in 1997, and was a lot different than I
expected going into the weekend.
Preparation
I was as well prepared for this contest as I've ever been. Most of the antenna
work was finished by mid-October. This year's improvements were to replace the
TH7 with a 4-el 30' 20M monobander (30' boom) and a 5-el 15M monobander (24'
boom). The 20M is now on the 70' U.S. Tower MA-770MDP rotating tubular crankup
and the 15M is on a 50' AB-577/GRC guyed portable military surplus mast (I have
three of them.) I'd planned to put up a 6-el 10M monobander (24' boom) on one
of the AB-577's but it didn't arrive in time (it was delivered 11/28.) That
left me with only one 10M antenna -- the C3E. 10M is not the C3E's best band
and I was concerned because my big 10M runs last year were on the TH-7.
Pre-contest testing showed that the 20M monobander was definitely superior to
the C3E, but the 15M monobander was about equal. However, most of the testing
was on the path to Europe and during the contest I found that the monobanders
were noticably better on the more distant paths.
I did some easy work on the wire antennas during the two weeks before the
contest. The beverage had stopped working and I discovered the termination
resistor had broken in half from the wire tension. I replaced the resistor with
a commercial termination box. The SWR on the 80M delta loop has always been too
high for the 87A and has been resonant too high in the band (about 3.6MHz). In
the past I've found it very difficult to adjust this delta, but I got lucky. My
first attempt was to add 1.5 feet of wire, which did nothing. Then I added
three more feet of wire and moved one of the corner points. This time the SWR
landed exactly where I wanted it. It's hard to explain, but that got me pumped!
The wire work was wrapped up about 5 days before the contest.
As far as operating practice goes, this was a good fall. I worked both days of
the CQWW SSB weekend at the KR1G M/S, getting into the swing after the long
hiatus since IARU in July. We worked a ton of mults in that contest (40 zones
on 10M!), which was great practice. I also did a full 1200+ QSO effort in ARRL
SS CW, which is great for knocking the rust off the old CW skills and getting
used to living without sleep. I deliberately avoided the SS SSB weekend on the
theory that it's too close to CQWW CW and the sleep was more important (not to
mention avoiding the inevitable raw throat.)
I planned my meals about a week before the contest and did all the grocery
shopping by Tuesday of contest week. I've got a list of "stimulating" foods
derived from an Air Force study -- avocados, chicken, aged meats, aged cheeses,
yogurt, etc. I decided to eat as light as possible this time in order to avoid
bloat and minimize eating time (which cuts into operating time even when you
eat in front of the radio.)
About a week and a half before the contest, I started analyzing scores,
breakdown sheets and reports from last year. I paid particular attention to
K5ZD's results. His writeup from last year is one of the best reports I've read
(besides, he won USA.) It gave me a real sense of what you have to do to find
the rate and work the most mults. He also documented a number of openings for
rare mults. It's fun reading, too. I re-read my own report, paying particular
attention to what I could do better.
Since I had a copy of our log from the KR1G M/S SSB effort, and had my own log
from last year, I decided to write a little Basic program to analyze when and
where new zones were worked. K5ZD was kind enough to give me a copy of his log,
too, which was the most useful of the three. My program produces three reports
from a Cabrillo file. The first report shows the first station worked in each
zone on each band and when that station was worked. This is useful for getting
a sense of what prefixes to look for. The second report shows the bands on
which each zone was worked during each hour of the contest (0000z-2300z
combined for the two days.) This is my favorite report -- if it's 0200z, you
can look at that hour column and see which bands are likely to yield which
zones. I found the report particularly useful for low-band mults in the wee
hours and deep Asia on the high bands in the morning and late afternoon. The
third report has a page for each band showing when each zone was worked on that
band. This report is in the same format as the propagation prediction sheets
YCCC distributes to its members each year. I did this one to see how well the
predictions lined up with actual operation. As expected, there was a high
degree of correlation. But there were some surprises, too.
All this analysis led to what I think is my best band plan yet. Hour-by-hour it
shows what band I should be running, what bands I should be S&Ping, where the
beams should be pointed, and alternates in case certain openings don't
materialize. Each year this plan gets more and more refined. Unfortunately,
much of it went out the window this year!
My level of work stress is usually high going into contest week, but this year
it was substantially lower. I retired as Chairman of our Seattle internet
voting company at the board meeting in Seattle on November 17. I've done that
job for three and a half years and it was getting increasingly difficult for me
to run the board and help the CEO from across the country. It's required about
30 trips to Seattle and thousands of telephone hours (KR1G can testify about
the hour-long phone conference I got into at his place during our CQWW SSB M/S
effort this year!) I was worried about handing over the reins to someone else,
but my stress level dropped considerably when we snagged my successor -- a
former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs, no less (you can read his bio at
http://www.votehere.com/leadership.html -- click on Board of Directors and Adm.
Bill Owens.) The transition involved a lot of board politics, which temporarily
added to the stress, but it was over by 11/17 and I immediately began to feel a
lot better. I'm still on the Board, and still have to make bi-monthly trips to
Seattle, but I'll be able to spend a lot more time with my family and hopefully
find another startup gig closer to home. Bottom line, I was feeling calmer
going into this year's CQWW CW than at any time since '97.
I made an effort to sleep as much as I could during the entire month of
November. I tend to stay up late at night working, and frequently live on five
hours of sleep or less. I was able to force myself to get at least seven hours
just about every day in November, and in the week leading up to the contest
slept and napped every chance I got.
Another stress reliever was a mellow Thanksgiving. We do Thanksgiving here at
least every other year, and I always cook about 90% of the meal. For those of
you who have never thrown a Thankgiving feast, it can be a high-stress exercise
in planning, shopping and timing everything to be done at the same time. I
enjoy it, but it can be exhausting. This year we were supposed to have an
invitation to someone else's house, but it fell through at the last minute.
Luckily, my wife arranged for some friends to come over, one of whom is a
professional chef! We divided the cooking among four people and I ended up only
having to prepare a couple of items (sausage-cranberry-cornbread stuffing and
green beans with mushrooms and almonds -- yum.) It was the most mellow
Thanksgiving at home I've had in a long, long time.
By the end of Thursday, I was really psyched for the contest. I felt better
prepared than ever, well rested, and very motivated. I started to feel
confident that I could do a full 48 hours in the chair, maybe 45 at worst. I
knew if I could put in that much time, and could take advantage of the analysis
I had done, I could place significantly higher than last year. So far, so
good...
Day of the Contest
I slept late on Friday and puttered around for several hours. I was very
excited about the contest and wanted to get going right away. I knew I wouldn't
be able to sleep in the afternoon, so I just tried to take it easy. My plan was
to watch the Nebraska-Colorado game and snooze whenever possible. I'm afraid it
didn't turn out that way at all.
If there's such a thing as a bad omen, it was that football game. My wife is
from Omaha, Nebraska, where Husker-mania is a bona fide religion. I was lucky
enough to marry into the National Championship (my college team was in the
basement again this year.) My in-laws are die-hard fans -- my otherwise demure
mother in-law has been known to scream, swear and stamp her feet while watching
Nebraska football. For those of you who have just arrived from another planet,
Nebraska was undefeated, number one in the nation going into the game. All I
can say is that it was the most shocking upset I've ever seen in college
football. Colorado killed Nebraska - something like 62 to 30. It was all over
in the first quarter. This just doesn't happen to the Huskers. I had a sense of
unreality and began to suspect that this bad karma didn't bode well for the
contest...
Sure enough, a quick check of the latest WWV report showed a flare had occurred
and the forecast was for a *major* geomagnetic storm. Great. No wonder Nebraska
lost. I figured it would be more important than ever to get off to a good start
before conditions fell apart. But that didn't turn out as expected, either.
The Contest
I packed up the cooler and sat down in front of the radio at about T-minus 10
minutes. Last year I started on 40M with 104 QSOs the first hour, but this year
I wanted to try 20M. Conditions have been good this fall, especially on 20M,
and I noticed that K5ZD had a great opening hour on 20M last year. But signal
levels did not appear to be particularly good on 20M, so I shifted gears and
started on 40M. I usually like to run near the bottom of the band early in the
contest, and have never had much trouble finding a spot. But this time there
wasn't anyplace to squeeze in -- maybe everyone else had decided that 20M
wasn't a good place to start. It took me until 0001z to nestle into 7042 and
start calling. After working only three stations in three minutes, two of them
domestic, I decided to go back down and muscle my way into the bottom of the
band. I landed at 7010, but only made three QSOs in 4 minutes. I couldn't get
any rate going.
With only six contacts in the log at 0012z, I was getting desperate. I went to
14011 and started calling CQ. The rate meter jumped to about 120/hr and I
finally I got a run going -- almost 15 minutes into the contest. Unfortunately,
this only lasted about 20 minutes. By 0032z the rate had slowed enough that I
was hitting 15M hard on the second radio. The 20M rate dropped to 60/hr by
0104z, so I packed it in and moved back to 40M. I had worked only 75 stations
in the first hour: 6 on 40M, 56 on 20M and 13 on 15M. That's compared with 104
in the first hour last year, mostly on 40M. The good news was that I had worked
55 mults, 14 more than last year.
The rate on 40M during the 0100z hour was disappointing, too. After starting
off at about 70/hr, the rate dropped steadily. I spent the whole hour on 40M
and worked only 45 stations. I only worked 5 stations on the second radio (20M
and 15M), so I think my motivation was starting to flag. I'm a big believer
that it's important to start off with a bang, and that hadn't happened at all.
Just the opposite. I was so bummed out by the rate that that I didn't hit the
second radio hard enough. As the rate got slower and slower, I began to realize
that I wasn't going to place very high -- I had only 177 Qs after three hours.
Even if conditions were hurting everyone else, my low antennas and far north
location were sure to be a liability.
I flirted with the idea of quiting, but just couldn't do it. Instead, I decided
to focus on working as many mults as possible. This is the weakest part of my
game, so I figured this year's contest could be a unique opportunity to improve
my S&P and mult hunting technique. I set the run radio CQing on 40M and hit 20M
and 80M hard with the second radio. In the 0200z hour I worked 23 running on
40M, 19 2nd radio contacts on 20M and 9 second radio contacts on 80M. The rate
picked up in the 0300z hour, and I worked 55 on 40M and 19 second radio
contacts on 20M. I spent the entire 0400z hour picking up mults on 160M and
80M. I should have had the run radio going too, but last year I learned that
you have to work the 160M mults when you hear them, and this takes a lot of
concentration. It would have been a good decision had the low bands been as
good as last year, but this time I got only 20 mults that hour -- and only 18
QSOs. In retrospect, I probably should have been running on 40M at the same
time.
I spent the 0500z hour running on 20M (41 Qs) and S&Ping 40M and 80M (19 and 3
Qs, respectively.) By the end of this hour, my increased focus on mults had
resulted in 51 more than last year. I had made up some QSO ground, too, and was
only 38 behind last year. I began to think I had a chance to get back in the
game. Then everything fell apart.
I think it's pretty well documented that the worst effects of the flare hit
most East Coast stations about this time. During the next seven hours
(0600z-1200z), I desperately looked for rate and found absolutely nothing. I
did the best I could with the second radio, but even my mults started falling
behind last year. The absence of a big EU sunrise opening on 20M really killed
the comparison with last year. My hourly QSO totals during this period were:
32, 11, 31, 15, 12, 13, and 29. The worst I'd ever done. 0630z-0730z was the
low point. Shortly after that, I looked at the rate meter and noticed that
Writelog was claiming I had taken 47 minutes off. This was wrong because I had
not left the chair since the start of the contest. A quick check of the log
showed no contacts from 0639z until 0726z. I had been CQing and tuning the
whole time, but was so absorbed in what I was doing that I didn't notice I
hadn't made a contact in 47 minutes! Nothing like that has ever happened to me
in a contest.
The plan called for me to start checking 20M at about 0900z. There should have
been at least an hour of good rate on 20M somewhere in the 0900z-1000z period,
but nothing doing. There should have been about an hour of good rate on 15M at
1100z or so, but again nothing was happening. I S&Ped as hard as I could on
160M-20M, but worked only 12 stations in the 1000z hour and 13 stations in the
1100z hour. This is when the high bands are supposed to take off, and they were
nearly empty. It was eerie. By 15 minutes into the 1300z hour I decided that
10M was not going to open either. Working only 111 stations in seven hours had
left me exhausted and very discouraged. I just had to get away from the radio
for a while or I felt sure I would quit the contest. I figured the only thing
to do was get some sleep -- right at what should have been the peak of the day!
To make matters worse, I had just loaded up on a big mug of coffee in
anticipation of the morning runs and had trouble sleeping. I snoozed on and off
for a couple of hours, check the bands at about 1515z (still nothing) and spent
about an hour and a half eating, visiting with my daughter, and complaining to
my wife about how bad the conditions were. She gave me a blank stare.
I got back on the radio at about 1630z. It turns out this was about 30-60
minutes too late. I S&Ped up the 10M band and found W1ECT calling CQ. He lives
about two miles south of me. I worked him and complained about the conditions.
He said EU was pretty good right there. I jumped to a clear frequency and got a
little rate going. The rate was better than it had been in the wee hours, but
still quite weak: in the next three and a half hours I worked only 141
stations. W1ECT's rate sheet shows he worked 233 in the same period. The
difference is that his TH-7 is at 100', while my C3E is at 50'. When conditions
are this bad, the extra height really counts (and maybe the TH-7 is superior to
the C3E on 10M.)
I got my best rate of the first day, 66/hr, during the 2000z hour on 20M. After
that, it was sheer hell for nine hours: 41, 37, 36, 7, 10, 26, 20, 12, and 19.
That's 208 QSOs in nine hours! The highlight of this period was stumbling
across a 220 degree skew path to JA on 10M at 0000z. But I only got two QSOs
out of it. Writelog shows two off periods during this time: about 90 minutes
from 0015z-0145z, when I wolfed down half a roast chicken, and 60 minutes
during 0500z. I'm pretty sure I was sleeping during that break -- I decided to
try sleeping in the chair as a way to avoid oversleeping. It seems to work.
Just after that nap, I got a burst of activity on 40M -- about 100 QSOs in 90
minutes. Then things fell apart again for about two hours. My log shows that I
took an hour break at 0900z, worked one station at 0954z, then took another
hour off. I know I wasn't sleeping. I think I took a shower, ate something,
came back and checked the radio, then took some more time off. I wasn't tired
enough to sleep, but was afraid I'd oversleep if I put my head down.
At 1048z I got back on 20M and worked 14 stations plus three new mults on 40M.
At 1130z I checked 15M and heard some strong signals from EU -- finally. I
jumped on 15M and racked up 140 Qs in less than 90 minutes. Things were looking
up! I kept checking 10M and deciding that it wasn't as loud as 15M. By 1300z I
was hearing EU booming in on 10M and made the shift. I think I could have moved
about 15 minutes earlier, but the 15M rate was still pretty good.
This is when the other contest started: 9 straight hours of some of the best
rate I've ever had. I did 810 Qs in the first 24 hours and 1429 in the second
half. A more dramatic stat is that I had 1104 Qs through the first 36 hours,
then did 1012 Qs in the next 9 hours. That's the longest sustained period I've
done averaging 100+ Qs/hr. Peak hour was 144. Not as high as last year (154),
and the big 3-hour run on 10M was only 384 vs 458 last year. But it just went
on and on this year, from 10M to 15M to 20M to 40M. I ran up about 420 contacts
on 10M in 3 hours 45 minutes, then another 225 in 2 hours 15 minutes on 15M.
Then I had a great run of 256 in two hours 20M (1900z-2000z.) Thanks to K5ZD
for mentioning the early East Coast opening on 20M in his writeup last year.
I probably could have run more on 20M during the 2100z hour, but I wanted to
fill in some mults on the high bands and was too tired to run high rate while
working the second radio. I ended up working 26 mults in two hours, getting
some much needed double mults from Africa, Oceania, VK/ZL, Alaska, Iceland,
etc. I spent the last hour running on 20M and 40M, chalking up another 81 Qs.
That's the highest last-hour rate I've ever had. It would have been higher, but
I was still scanning for mults on the second radio.
I've never seen such a dramatic turnaround in propagation, from some of the
worst contest conditions I've experienced to some of the best. Usually
conditions slowly improve after a big disturbance, but this time they jumped to
being exceptionally good. I'll remember this for a long time.
Writelog says I worked 39 hours of the contest, but I know it was more than
that. There was that 47 minute period where I didn't work anything but was
trying. I think there might have been one or two similar periods. 41-42 hours
would be more accurate. I'll call it 41.
Last year I dropped a couple of places due to a 7.5% UBN report (up from 4.5%
in '99.) Despite the bad conditions this year, I had the sense that my copy was
better. I had spent some time analyzing my UBN report and was more aware of the
letters I tend to miscopy (u -> a, s -> h, d ->, 7 -> 8 etc.) I asked for more
confirmations this year. Also, there were fewer runs and most of my mistakes
happen during runs. I'm optimistic.
I had only one minor equipment failure: the "H" key on my keyboard started
putting out extra characters, then stopped working. I spent about 20 minutes
taking the keyboard apart and cleaning the contacts, which fixed the problem.
As for the other equipment, the more I use the 1000D and 1000MP, the more I'm
thinking about trading the MP for another 1000D. The MP AGC isn't great in
pileups, so there's less flexibility -- i.e., the big runs have to be done on
the 1000D. Although the selectivity and sensitivity are comparable (if
anything, the MP is better), I just prefer the way the 1000D sounds. The MP is
a great DX radio, and has great programmability, but I prefer the 1000D for
contesting. If anyone would like to trade, let me know.
Conclusions
Let me state the obvious: bad conditions suck! For almost two-thirds of the
contest I struggled to keep going. Many times I thought about quitting. I even
considered a 20M single band at one point. But I kept going because there's
always hope and I need practice hunting mults on all the bands. I know I would
have been disappointed in myself if I'd quit, and from where I sit now I'm glad
I kept going (like women who give birth, you tend to forget the pain soon after
the event.) The reward was more than just the great propagation on Sunday.
Unfortunately, I won't be able to put a full effort into ARRL DX CW this year.
My wife's been dreaming about going to the Olympics since she was a kid, and is
hell-bent on going to Salt Lake in February. Having no desire to brave the
crowds (TV is fine by me), and not wanting to spend $5000+ on tickets and
airfare for me and my 5-year old (that would buy a nice tower...), I've elected
to stay home and babysit. I'm sure I can get in at least 20 hours, but it
really hurts to miss an all-out effort in one of the two big CW contests of the
year. I guess this is going to be a practice year.
Meanwhile, I enjoyed the M/S at KR1G this year and hope to do more contests
that way. I'd like to do a guest single op, too. If anybody with a mega station
in New England would like to lend it out for one of the big CW contests next
year, let me know. Otherwise, I'll have to keep my fingers crossed and hope the
Admiral makes me rich enough to buy that dream QTH with five 140' towers on top
of a mountain in Vermont :-)
Thanks for the Q's, zones and mults. No matter what the conditions, there's
nothing like CQWW CW. See you next time!
73, Dick WC1M
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