CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 2000
Call: ZC4DW
Category: Single Operator
Power: Low Power
Band: Mono 20
Mode: CW
Country: UK Bases on Cyprus
Zone: 20
Operating time (hrs): 39
BAND QSO QSO PTS PTS/QSO ZONES COUNTRIES
160 0 0 0.00 0 0
80 0 0 0.00 0 0
40 0 0 0.00 0 0
20 1572 4350 2.77 33 115
15 0 0 0.00 0 0
10 0 0 0.00 0 0
---------------------------------------------------
Totals 1572 4350 2.77 33 115 => 643,800
Club Affiliation: Chiltern DX Club
Operator: Dez Watson ZC4DW (G0DEZ)
Transceiver: TS-870
Antennas: 1. ¼ wave vertical (converted CB whip)
2. ½ wave wire dipole at 8m agl
Comments:
CQWW cw was a great opportunity to air a new, and not
so new callsign.
Myself and Steve ZC4BS (G4KIV) only got the go ahead to
operate from the Eastern Sovereign Base last Friday -
13 hours before the contest started.
Big thanks to the Ayios Nikolaos motorbike club for letting
us use their premises as a temporary shack for the weekend.
As you can imagine Friday afternoon was hectic putting up a
10m dipole for Steve and 20m dipole + 20m gp for me. I loaned
Steve an IC-706 (without cw filter), and I used the old faithful
TS-870 - both stations barefoot. Time was definitely not on our side,
however we justed wanted to air ZC4, have some fun - that was our goal.
For me, 20m started great, some good Carribean mults in the
early hours, then around 05z everything exploded - EU and
JA opened simultaneously with NA strong also. 05-07z was an
exceptional rate and mult period.
Disaster struck at about 08z in the form of a severe migraine.
I was forced to travel back home (5B4 land) which is fortunately
2 km away. 4 crucial hours were lost from 08-12z being forced
to sleep off the migraine.
The afternoon provided a steady stream of EU, then more NA
as evening progressed. Don't know whether there was aurora later
on Saturday evening but 20m got very noisy, terrible QRN.
Anyone else experience that?
20z (10pm local - Cyprus is 2 hrs ahead of UK) and a good time
to drive the 2km back to 5B4 and get a couple of hours sleep. Steve
called it a day much earlier - 10m is a more suited to 'the family man'.
I seem to remember ending day 1 with 30 zones and 90 countries and about
700 QSOs.
Up again at 02z but was it worth it? 20m seemed to open slightly later
the 2nd day. What did you think? But as usual at 05z EU woke up,
and the JA's were more prominent day 2. After a busy 05-08z period
I was delighted not to have a repeat performance of the migraine, however
a cat had found its way onto the roof, so QRX and get the ladders out
to help the poor fellow down! He must have appreciated this and he curled
up on my lap and fell asleep. It came as a shock, but I later discovered
he was riddled with worms!
Steve had no such problems with the cat, it must have been his mustard
sandwiches supplied by his XYL. Thanks Carol!
Strangely the mults were not so forthcoming on the Sunday, condx
being slighly better on day 2 (I thought) the run rates were good
though.
I couldn't break 6D2X pileup on the first day for a double mult,
and hoped to catch them on the Sunday but never found them again.
Unable to crack their NA pileup, the same went for a CO and FM,
2 missed mults and pileups I couldn't break. They were the only
exceptions, as I was really surprised how he majority of the
pileups were fairly easy to work.
Sunday afternoon and I'm looking at the Asian 20m lp record 570k, and my
score stands at 500k. Hey, I should have took this seriously from the
start (damn if it wasn't for that migraine yesterday).
As Steve closed down on 10m, he gave me some words of encouragement, and
I started to search for the missing zones and those countries which really
you expect to work.
OH0 proved to be a late addition, ZS for zone 38 was a late double
mult worked. Zone 30 came late, and so too Chile for zone 12.
I never heard OY or any zone 40 on 20m, same goes for KH6 or any zone 31.
With 33 zones and 115 countries, 1400 QSOs I was about to throw the switch
at 22z, when NA started to open again, but sounding very auroral.
A quick S+P session made me think about staying on, afterall I had late
thoughts of that record. In the final hour I even managed a nice run
of zone 3.
Great fun was had by us both, and Steve is now telling me his story on
10m. It's also fun comparing our logs as we didn't get much chance to chat
over the weekend. We could kick ourselves for not working each other - what
a pair of mugs!
73 Dez - ZC4DW (G0DEZ)
dez@cytanet.com.cy
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