VE6JY M/S ARRL DX CW
ops: VE6BF VE6EX VE6WQ VE6JY
BAND Raw QSOs Valid QSOs Points Countries
______________________________________________________
160CW 2 2 6 2
80CW 28 28 84 21
40CW 253 251 753 71
20CW 1096 1071 3207 94
15CW 664 654 1962 93
10CW 518 517 1548 87
______________________________________________________
Totals 2561 2523 7560 368
Final Score = 2,782,080 points.
Comments:
Propagation was the big worry as things looked dreadful by mid week.
Power line noise was also a major concern, but saw the TransAlta Utilities
crew working on one of the sources Friday afternoon as we headed into town
for lunch just before the contest.
We also had four straight days of hoarfrost ice forming on all the
antennas so although it looked pretty, it wasn't useful stuff. All the
wire antennas for 160 were either resonant somewhere in the broadcast band
or lying on the ground completely. Ropes broke sometime during the first
night for both the 160 delta and the 160 bobtail (which then fell among
the 15m 5/5/5/5 stack!) but I managed to clear away the debris during the
day on Saturday. The element tips on 80m yagi were nearly hanging
vertically (actually about 10 deg short of being vertical) and I can only
imagine how it affected the pattern. The sun melted it all off on
Saturday and the elements seemed even more level than I remember them,
although I'm sure that's just an optical illusion after having seen them
so bent for so long. The 10 and 15m OWA style yagis, while also loaded
heavily with hoarfrost, showed just a very slight change in SWR and still
performed very well. This was a bit of an unknown as this was the first
winter these OWA designs have been up.
Things didn't start out well as 15 wasn't productive, 20 seemed poor and
40 sounded great! So changed to 40m near 0100 and basically stayed there
till 0830. Brief excursions to 80 and 20 produced very little - 80 was
especially poor to S/C America and our first 2 Q's on 80 were Europe.
After 40 closed, we found 20 in good shape to Europe from about 1400 on.
15 didn't open till 1630 (unusually late) and surprisingly 10 was great
to Eu from 1800 to 1930 or so. 10 and 15 were pretty good to Asia in our
afternoon evening and when they folded near 0230, 20 was just opening to
Eu/As over the pole where it continued to be very good for the next 10
hours. 15 was likely good from then on, but when 10 opened to Eu from
1500 on it was even better (and longer) than the first day. Ran Europe on
10m to about 1830 then dropped to 15 and then later on 20.
Propagation both days was very different, but generally very good on at
least one band. 80 was a bit better the second night but 160 was noisy
here and we heard virtually nothing except USA calling DX. Congrats to
HC8N as they managed to hear us on one call for our only DX on that band,
other than a lone XE.
Things inside the shack behaved reasonably OK but my earliest recollection
of Saturday morning as I was dozing was hearing "better wake Don,
something's really smoking bad!". Turned out just to be a variac for one
of the rotor selsyns, which by the way, had been entertaining us with its
antics the night before, spinning madly one way or the other, and
generally indicating anything but the antenna position. A filter cap also
let go in a small power supply which also caused a brief flurry of
excitement (and odour). We do try to maintain an non-smoking contesting
environment whenever possible.
73 Don
VE6JY
VE6JY Don Moman email: ve6jy@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
Box 127 Lamont, Alberta email forwarding: ve6jy@rac.ca
CANADA T0B 2R0
(780) 895-2925
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