Here are some miscellaneous notes from the IARU contest, with
answers to a couple of questions that were posed. For those
who asked, a description of the K4RO station can be found at:
http://www.k4ro.net/tcg/stations/k4ro_stn.html
I ended up with 1518 Q x 147 Z for 844k points, CW only.
Heard an FK8 10 minutes before the contest, but never again during.
The Ten-Tec Centurion amp (2x 3-500z) worked great this time.
It ran 1.0 kW for 24 hours straight without a hiccup.
The high 40m omega-matched boom dipole was used for receiving
only. It arcs at power levels over over 400 watts. All 40 meter
transmitting was done on the vertical.
The ring rotator failure shows the symptoms of the wiper arm lifting
off of the direction indicator pot. I have not yet had time to
investigate the problem. Maybe I'll get lucky and just find a broken
wire up there. It failed around QSO # 640, and surely hurt my mult
count as it turns my 20-15-10 S&P antenna. It especially hurt on 10
meters, where some QSOs would have likely been made beaming south.
On the other hand, it stuck NNW, which was good for JA.
The amount of rude operating seemed unusually high. KH2D
commented on some of the practices on phone, but there were
some real lids on CW as well. In particular, once again some
of the EU HQ stations were incredibly rude. One even told me
that HQ stations had a right to take whatever freq they wanted
in the IARU! Towards the end of the contest I got fed up and
began jumping down operator's throats when they started CQ'ing
on my frequency. I only "lost" one frequency fight. A full kW
sure helps a lot in this regard. Sometimes enough is enough.
I guess frequency fights are just another part of contesting, and
I just better learn to deal with them effectively.
Was powered off and disconnected at ~1900Z for about 25 minutes due
to the thunderstorms. I operated until I feared getting killed, and
then did a quick shutdown and waited impaitently until the lightning
moved about a mile away. With other breaks thrown in, I probably
operated something close to 23 hours. More storms started up again
at 1200Z Sunday just as the contest ended (whew!) The QRN was brutal
at times, especially on 20 meters.
I really need to install blinking indicators on my Beverage switches.
Too many times I thought a band was "dead" because I was listening on
a Beverage instead of a yagi. That hurt my mults too, I'm sure.
Here are the numbers...
Hourly rate:
HOUR 160CW 80CW 40CW 20CW 15CW 10CW TOTAL ACCUM
---- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ----- -----
12 0 0 0 9 69 0 78 78
13 0 0 0 11 79 0 90 168
14 0 0 0 2 73 6 81 249
15 0 0 0 1 61 2 64 313
16 0 0 0 12 47 2 61 374
17 0 0 0 1 62 3 66 440
18 0 0 0 32 18 0 50 490
19 0 0 0 26 13 0 39 529
20 0 0 0 8 34 0 42 571
21 0 0 0 43 5 0 48 619
22 0 0 0 64 1 0 65 684
23 0 0 4 49 0 0 53 737
0 0 0 7 79 0 0 86 823
1 0 3 25 33 1 0 62 885
2 0 8 32 29 3 0 72 957
3 0 4 33 40 0 0 77 1034
4 0 8 58 0 0 0 66 1100
5 8 0 6 36 0 0 50 1150
6 0 0 0 87 0 0 87 1237
7 7 0 0 66 0 0 73 1310
8 4 8 0 48 0 0 60 1370
9 0 0 13 29 0 0 42 1412
10 0 1 12 28 0 0 41 1453
11 0 0 0 65 0 0 65 1518
TOTAL 19 32 190 798 466 13
Peak Rates:
1237: 4 per minute (240/hr)
0319: 21 per 10 minutes (126/hr)
1320: 96 per hour
Total Qs: 1567 in 24 hours - average rate: 65 per hour
TR-Log reports 169 band changes, and 74 second radio QSOs.
The actual number of second radio QSOs is probably higher, as
sometimes I worked 2 stations on the second rig without a QSO
happening on the first rig.
I was surprised by the number of zone 45 and zone 29 stations.
Top Ten Zones:
1. 28 349
2. 08 259
3. 45 173
4. 29 159
5. 06 138
6. 07 104
7. 27 65
8. 18 45
9. 30 41
10. 04 26
Continent List
160 80 40 20 15 10 30 17 12 ALL
--- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ---
USA calls = 14 24 139 194 137 5 0 0 0 513
VE calls = 4 4 5 16 13 0 0 0 0 42
N.A. calls = 0 0 1 6 4 0 0 0 0 11
S.A. calls = 1 1 4 13 4 8 0 0 0 31
Euro calls = 0 3 31 411 222 0 0 0 0 667
Afrc calls = 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 2
Asia calls = 0 0 0 32 30 0 0 0 0 62
JA calls = 0 0 6 115 52 0 0 0 0 173
Ocen calls = 0 0 3 10 4 0 0 0 0 17
Total calls = 19 32 190 798 466 13 0 0 0 1518
(Dupes removed.)
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