CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 1996
Call: 4M5X Country: Venezuela
Mode: SSB Category: Multi Single
BAND QSO QSO PTS PTS/QSO ZONES COUNTRIES
160 137 393 2.87 11 31
80 343 971 2.83 20 83
40 1383 4039 2.92 29 110
20 1572 4590 2.92 31 134
15 1841 5440 2.95 30 134
10 428 1218 2.85 22 67
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Totals 5704 16651 2.92 143 559 => 11,689,002
.
Operator List:
YV5JDP, Giovanni Bianchini
YV5EED, Ramon Perez Brett
YV5IQJ, Victor Maldonado
YV5JCN, Nelson Riverio
YV5LMW, Antonio de Aberu
YV5MHX, Eduardo Barboza
YV5RW, Ray Campos
WM2C, Kenny Silverman
Equipment Description: Station of YV5JDP, Caracas
Station 1: TS950, Alpha 76
Station 2: TS940, Drake L4B
Station 3: TS450, SB221
Packet: Via Internet from USA and Italy
Antennas:
Tower 1
160: Full size 1/4 sloping vertical
40: 3 ele yagi
10: 5 ele yagi
Tower 2
80: Inverted-V, 1/4 sloper
20: 5 ele yagi
15: 5 ele yagi + 4 ele yagi fixed EU/AF (for double beaming)
4M5X Story:
While you have heard 4M5X on in CW contests in the past few years,
most of the recent operations have been by myself and the M/S team of
WS4E, K0PP, KE7X, & WX9E. This year I went down solo for a bit a
vacation, and to train the members of Groupo DX Caracas (holder of
4M5X) on world competitive WW M/S operations. The Association (as
they call themselves), is group of hams who are dedicated to the
spirit of dx-peditions, contesting, people, and radio events. You
have probably worked members of the association on numerous occasions
as YX0AI, 4M5LR, YW5LT, 4M0ARV, and numerous other expeditions.
The original plans were to go to La Orchillla island for a nice beach
operation, but we ended up at YV5JDP's QTH (site of the 1995 CQ WW CW
4M5X operation - check cover of October CQ Contest). While the team
has been on a lot of dx-peditions, they are relative newcomers to
contesting, let alone world competitive tactics.
Most of the learning was OPT (on-pileup-training), and passing mults
was the toughest challenge. But by the end of the contest, the team
was getting good at passing mults, and a great time was had by all.
Special thanks go to Eduardo, YV5MHX, for manning the packet
connections. To stay connected to the YV cluster, we had to hit
"enter" every 10 minutes, or we would be disconnected. Eduardo
dedicated many a sleepless hours to keeping the cluster running.
I think the 4M5X team should be proud of their first world-class team
contest operation - they did great!!
Band Summary:
160: Some EU the first night. Too bad we didn't have the mult
passing game down then, as the second evening was a total wipeout -
as local lightening rendered the band useless with QRN. We need to
get some better ears on this band.
80m: Similar conditions as 160. Finding a frequency on 80 was an
interesting challenge for some of the ops, as they didn't quite
understand that a quite frequency in YV might have +40 signals in EU.
For the little time we spent on 80m the mult totals were quite nice.
Surprising to see a JA logged on this band, especially at 2 1/2 hours
before JA sunset. Either they were strong, or we blew a double mult,
as we never worked another JA on this band.
40m: Strong signals from everywhere, but crowded as usual. No other
way to hear the callers except to CQ below 7025. Nice JA opening
produced the most JA QSOs of any band.
20m: The night before the contest, 20m was dead at 0000 GMT like it
has been for about a year. But to our surprise it was open at the
start of the contest. Usually 20m has decent openings to JA, but this
year was different. Out of the 18 Asian stations worked on 20m, 9 of
them were from Japan. Highlight of 20m: about 10 minutes before the
end of the contest, I saw a spot for DU9... the pileup was big from
the USA, and the DU9 was about S1. Hmm, how do I break the pileup??
I rearranged my pants, and in the best YL voice I could muster, gave
one quick "4M5X". Amazingly, I broke the USA pileup with one call.
You should have heard the laughter of the group after I pulled that
one off!!
15M: The "Energizer Bunny Band" it kept going and going (sorry for
the local reference for our non-USA colleagues). We had set up a
second yagi fixed on EU/AF to double beam, and it was worth a
tremendous amount of points. We were running USA, EU, AF and PAC long
path well into our early evening. At one point I was running 4X's,
YB's, and 5Z4's!!! Nice longpath over EU into YB, VK, and ZL. I
can't believe that we didn't work more rare stuff, as the LP signals
were over S9 most of the time. The other great mystery: we didn't
work one JA on 15m! I would have passed one from 20, but there
weren't any strong ones to pass.
10M: After hearing HC8N running the USA early Saturday morning, and
us not hearing anything from USA, I was getting depressed again
(repeat of WW CW 1995). But the band did finally open later, with
strong USA signals. At the time, the "last 100" rate on 15m was
around 300, so we didn't run on 10m until the second day. Sunday
highlight was +10 S9 BONE-CRUSHING loud YB longpath over EU. Similar
loud signals from Africa, and only a few weak EU stations, mostly on
Sunday.
Club Affiliation: Groupo DX Caracas
73, and thanks for the QSOs!
Kenny WM2C
P.S. Many thanks to Giovanni, YV5JDP, and XYL Anabella, YV5JDQ, for
their hospitality.
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