92 countries in one weekend - G3XTT CQ WW CW (160m High-Power Single-Band
Assisted)
92 countries in a weekend? No big deal .. But not bad if its on 160.
Having made a new England (as against New England!!) record on single-band 160
last year, I wanted to enter a different category this year, but needed to be
available for family activities during daylight. So I decided to have a crack at
single-band 160 assisted. It was going to be embarrassing if I ended up with an
assisted score less than last years unassisted but, on the other hand, 160m
conditions in 1995 were exceptional from here, with good signals from every part
of the mainland US.
The first hour demonstrated to me that Packet can be very frustrating in a
single-band 160 effort. I knew that each and every mutliplier was going to be
crucial, but I was running at close to 100 an hour and it would not have made
sense to break off for mults, as I would almost certainly have lost my run
frequency (mults take much longer to work on 160 than on the high bands - the
calling stations are all loud, the mult is frequently weak, and the packet
pile-ups can be ferocious).
What I soon realised is that Packet actually is a benefit, but not in the way I
had expected. Where it came into its own was later in the contest when very few
new ones were being spotted. Having Packet gave me the confidence to continue to
run when otherwise I might have been scanning the band for multipliers. Even so,
I got some nice multipiers by finding them myself , with the great benefit that
they were relatively easy to work by not having a Packet-generated pile-up. But
also, by being free to run more than I might otherwise have done, some nice
multipliers came to me (TI9C and D44BC are a couple of good examples).
Conditions to the US from here were well down on last year. I worked only one
zero-land station (K4VX) and only a handful of 5s and 9s. Nothing at all from
W6 or W7, although KL7RA called me the first night for a nice double multiplier.
On the other hand, propagation to the East was outstanding. Despite this, I
never did manage to catch a JA, but was happy to work A4, A6, A7, XX, XZ and
VQ9. Who would have thought it would ever be possible to work an XZ multiplier
on 160!?
As always, there were some juicy multipliers I missed. It was frustrating , for
example, to hear FS5PL call YV5JDP, presumably for the multiplier, but never to
hear him call CQ. He probably called some other lucky so-and-so for the G
multiplier.
The final tally was 967 Qs, 23 zones and 92 countries, for a claimed score of
170085 points. My country tally was A4 A6 A7 C6 CT CT3 D4 DL EA EA6 EA8 EI ER ES
EU EX F FM G GD GI GM GU GW HA HB HB0 HC8 HP I IS IT9 J3 JW K KL7 KP2 KP4 LA LX
LY LZ OE OH OH0 OK OM ON OY OZ P4 PA PY PY0F S5 SM SP SV SV5 SV9 T7 T9 TA TF TI
TK UA UA1(FJL) UA2 UA9 UN UR VE VP2E VQ9 XE XX XZ YL YO YU Z3 ZF 3V 4L 4U1ITU 4X
5V 7X 9A 9Y. I heard well over 100 countries in all, so DXCC in a weekend in
this event should certainly be on the cards some year. My zone tally was 1 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 14 15 16 17 18 20 21 24 26 33 34 (N6../MM) 35 39 40. Comfortably
ahead of my 1995 score, and (I believe) a new world record for 160 single-band
assisted (mainly because its not a popular category, but what the hell, a world
record is a world record!).
Don G3XTT
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