BAND Raw QSOs Valid QSOs Points Countries Zones
___________________________________________________________
160CW 19 19 43 14 8
80CW 55 55 136 34 12
40CW 297 295 729 83 26
20CW 227 224 546 70 30
15CW 642 636 1808 100 29
10CW 537 534 1547 106 27
___________________________________________________________
Totals 1777 1763 4809 407 132
Final Score = 2,592,051 points.
WOW. The CQWW CW. THE BEST contest of them all for sure.
I had an absolute blast in this one, even with the strange
conditions and complete lack of 20 meter European runs.
November is definately "hell month" for North American
contest fanatics. I'm kind of releived that it's over.
The real joy began Friday about 1800Z, before the contest.
The line noise that had plagued me in CW SS had reached
ridiculous levels. I called Nashville Electric Service
(NES) Thursday and beged them to send the "A Team" out if
they were available. Friday morning, with line noise S9+10
on 15m & 10m, the NES bucket truck arrived. Out I went with
AA4NU's 135 Mhz RFI sniffer and showed them the two suspected
poles. The noise was so bad that it seemed to be coming from
everywhere. Tech#1 (Toby) got out the ultrasonic sniffer and
nailed it down to one pole. Tech#2 (Mike) went up in the bucket
and eventualy replaced an insulator, after trying a few other
things. HALLELUJAH! It was completely quiet, and it remained
that way the whole weekend. I have NEVER heard so well here.
My station is one tower, two tribanders and wires. No gain
below 20m. And if you believe the tribander report from a
few years back, I have "negative gain" on 20m-10m. I really
enjoy seeing what I can do from my own home station.
I tried to get some gain on 40m to EU this year by putting up
a 2-L quad. Major thanks to WB4LHO for helping me install
the quad. Unfortunately, the antenna turned out to be a big
disappointment. The 40m N4KG "boom dipole" remains by far the
best 40 meter antenna I've used at this station. Next year
I'll try a 2-L wire yagi, but my very rugged terrain and single
caternary support will make that a challenge to Europe.
I got off to a rough start -- just a bit overwhelmed at the
starting bell. Twenty meters was a complete bust. I don't
think I ever ran EU on twenty, and the nighttime openings were
non-existant. Fortunately 40m was in fine shape, and even
with the loop not playing like I'd hoped, I was able to run
EU on 40m with the boom dipole for a few hours. My contest
notes are sprinkled with comments like "It so QUIET" and
"ghod bless NES" and NO LINE NOISE... It was heaven.
Highlights included the incredible number of African mults, and
all of the other multipliers from all over. This was my best
multiplier effort yet in a DX contest from home, but my QSO
count suffered some. I felt like I was able to walk in and
out of the most unruly pileups with general ease. Maybe all
that QRP S&Ping lately has helped my pileup skills. I was
also much better at moving along if I didn't work a mult in
a reasonable amount of time. Ten and fifteen had decent morning
EU runs, but JA did not really come hammering through until
the very end of the contest, when they were very loud. Having
an XW call ME was just unbelievable. The real highlight was
just being able to HEAR. I thoroughly enjoyed this contest
from start to finish. After the complete gut-wrench of SS,
this was DX heaven. I operated about 40 hours, and slept about
five hours total. Everything worked great in the station,
including my ridiculously simple home brew TIC ring controller.
Working DXCC on both ten and fifteen meters was pretty cool too.
Lowlights were the disappointing 40m quad performance, and
the stations who went an absurd amount of time without IDing.
I know sending TU helps the rate, and I do it too. But not
ID'ing for 20 QSO's starts to become ridiculous. I resorted
to calling stations and asking for their callsings. I tried
hard to determine who they were by other means, but as a single
op, I don't know who you are without your call sign. If you're
sending a rare zone, I'm going to work you and ask for your call
sign before sending my report. And no, I won't do this immediately.
I'll make a real good effort first to figure out who you are
(even though you are not IDing) so as not to waste YOUR precious
time OR MINE. But when you go on for 30 QSOs without signing,
I'm going to call you when my run frequency permits it. And you
won't get any sympathy from me for wasting your time, or hurting
your rhythm and rate. My time is as precious as yours. My only
other peeve was some of those klicky signals. Good grief -- do
some stations really need their CW signal to waste so much energy
and bandwidth with clicks and trashy spurs?
The CQWW CW is the undisputed king of DX contests. What a blast!
Thanks to all of the intrepid travellers who make this the
best weekend of the year on the radio. I hope to be one of
you some day.
-Kirk K4RO
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