ARRL 10 METER CONTEST -- 1998
Call: ZL2DX (ZL2BSJ) Country: New Zealand
Category: Single Operator
HP/CW only
MODE QSO QSO PTS STATES COUNTRIES
CW 1886 7544 58 69
SSB 0 0 0 0
-----------------------------------------
Totals 1886 7544 58 69 = 958,088
Club Affiliation: Kiwi Contest Group
Comment:
A single op this year, as work and commitments got in the way of
a multioperator effort. While Chris ZL2DX painted the the house
and Tony ZL2AGY went to work, yours truly kicked the sheep
deposits out to set up shop in the ZM2K woolshed.
The big 13 m 7 el. yagi was connected up, and a home brew
10 m GP installed on a 10 m tall post as a sensing antenna.
In spite of wild pre-contest rumours on the ZL DX-Cluster network
mentioning funny things happening with the sun, the 10 m band
proved to be in pretty good shape from here. It may have closed
briefly during the night, but in both cases the band was open
when I turned in and also when I got up at first light.
Propagation across the Pacific was very good, with all States
worked half way through the contest. Even DC got in the log
twice, and Nevada was easily worked as well, unlike last year
when that multiplier was clocked up only in the last couple of
minutes. ARRL members were out in force to support the contest,
a lot of what were clearly Sunday afternoon contesters ended up
in the log.
VE was trickier...for the last 6 hours of the contest the beam
was welded on VE, yet I missed out on LAB, NWT, YU and PEI, never
even heard them. Lots of JA's were on during their local weekend.
I couldn't work the T88 who was in a huge pile-up of Eu's and
also missed XZ1N who I understand turned up in the contest.
Africa was the usual...with the Voodoo guys gone it could have
been on the moon. Western Europe produced a surprise long path
on the first local evening after a brief and shaky short path.The
GP paid off spotting the sneaky reversal. On our local Sunday
night (Sunday morning UTC) Europe was in on the more usual short
path. Good signals on both local nights from OT8T, the Baltic
stations and also the OH contesters. At times heavy echos made it
impossible to copy the machine gun merchants. The prefix part of
the call would be in the clear, until the delayed path part of
the call turned the CW into a mushy kind of a carrier with slight
AM keying riding on top of it.
Another interesting episode was working TK5EP for an unexpected
late Eu mult over the Pacific and US in the local Monday morning.
Also worked was IK4MHB, as were a number of EA5's. In the
novice/tech segment of the band W7TSQ/HR6 was worked as a rare
(from here) Central American mult.
Thanks to Chris ZL2DX for moral support and the use of the
callsign. This single op stuff is more knackering than I
thought...as I found out when I woke up, slumped over the
keyboard, to the sound of 'nr???' Sorry about that...it only
happened once (as far as I am aware). After the first two hours
the CW copy ability went downhill fast as B's became D's and S's
sounded like H's. Anyway, it was good fun...see you next year.
Wilbert, ZL2BSJ
PS: Have a look at the ZL9CI site on http://www.qsl.net/zl9ci/
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