W1HIJ NAQP CW RESULTS - Jan 97
Total Score = 15,253
186 QSO's, 82 Mults
9 Hours
Three bands (40,20,15) + 1 Q on 80
TS-940S (100 W) 40 Meter Dipole (40 & 15), 2 20 Meter dipoles
(perpendicular) all at about 30 feet. QTH is ridge top at 600 feet
MSL and about 1/2 mile from Pacific Ocean, 45 Miles South of LA
Had a great time and met my personal goals for this my first NAQP.
Looking forward to the next one. It's reassuring to know that among
all the Bill's, the Bob's, and so forth there was DOGBERT and
SLUGGO. Helps to keep one's ears awake beyond the first 2 or three
characters (even if I did have to ask for a repeat on DOGBERT!).
Conditions seemed "abnormal" without usual fairly strong opening of
15 meters in mid afternoon local time. As a result only 20 Q's on
15 with only 11 Mults. Had to switch to 20 where majority (93) of
the Q's and Mults came from. 20 closed early (about 1/2 hour before
sunset) even though lately it's been strong into the pacific and
South America as long as 1 to 2 hours after sunset. So I git pushed
to 40 earlier than planned. It was productive for the first two
hours (S&P rates around 30 to 35), but then a combination of lack
of new stations and what seemed like collapsing propagation caused
the rate to plummet to a total of 14 in 1.5 hours. So I quit an
hour before the end of the contest.
Lessons learned----
I made the wrong decision for off time, assuming that 40 would be
its usual strong self well into the evening (0300Z to 0600Z). In
retrospect I should have stayed on in the daytime and milked 15 for
whatever I could get instead of taking offtime of 2040 to 2140Z.
Other important lesson----IF YOU BOTHER TO SUBSCRIBE TO PROPAGATION
RELATED EMAIL THEN READ IT----KH6BZF PUT OUT A GEOMAG ALERT ON
FRIDAY WHICH I DIDN'T SEE UNTIL SUNDAY MORNING. THAT PROBABLY WOULD
HAVE CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT PLANNED OFFTIMES.
It's an old story but here goes again---- When in doubt and the S&P
rate's not great try calling CQ before switching bands--- in
desperation I moved up to around 14060 at about 2330Z called CQ and
got responses from both KL7 and KH6. The only time I heard the
mults for the whole time!!!
Learned some more about the pleasures of technology---I guess it's
the usual story of old dogs and new radios, but I think I'm finally
getting the idea about what I can do with two VFO's!!! (Don't
laugh, remember my last receiver was an HRO-60 in 1971). And now
Ithink that I even trust TRLog to really keep track of QSO's. It
was a real pleasure to have an integrated logging and memory keyer
actually working-----
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Doesn't have anything to do with NAQP, but I hope other people also
were able to take advantage of japanese contesting going to the
dogs--- just before NAQP started, I had the pleasure of working (in
the JA International low band contest) JL1 MUT, followed
immediately by JL1 ARF!!!
Kept waiting for JL1 JEF to show up but never did.
Thanks all for the QSO's and the pleasure of working so many great
OP's 73 & BCNU
de Bill, W1HIJ
Bill Scholz
New Century Technologies, Inc.
Newport Beach, California, USA
(714) 720-1697
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