IARU HF Championship
Call: WC1M
Operator(s):
Station:
Class: SO CW Power: HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Mults
-----------------------------------
160: 10 5
80: 51 19
40: 236 47
20: 857 65
15: 518 50
10: 37 13
-----------------------------------
Total: 1709 0 199 = 1,294,495
Club: YCCC
Comments:
Antennas:
160 - trapped vee at 55'
80 - NNE/SSW right-angle delta loop at 70', Trapped vee at 55'
40 - 4-square with 60 ground radials per element
20 - TH-7 @ 70', C3E @ 50' (separate towers)
15 - 5-EL @ 50', TH-7 @ 70', C3E @ 50' (separate towers)
10 - TH-7 @ 70', C3E @ 50' (separate towers)
NNE 580' beverage
Equipment: FT-1000D + Alpha 87A, FT1000mp + ACOM 2000A, Writelog
Back in 1995, well before I got serious about contesting, my friend WI1S said,
"Oh, if you want wallpaper try IARU -- you'll get a certificate just for
showing up." I tried it that year and won NH CW-only with only 123,840 points
-- 522 QSOs and 86 mults. All I had at the time was a GAP Titan multiband
vertical. The certificate has endorsements for "Section Leader", "250 QSOs" and
"50 Multipliers". N2IC/0 won USA CW-only that year, with 1,203,734 points --
1766 QSOs and 173 mults. Of course, 1995 was near the bottom of the sunspot
cycle, but the QST article raves about the propagation being spectacular.
It's certainly not possible to win USA CW-only in IARU with 1.2M points anymore
-- it takes at least twice that. Nor is it possible to win NH CW-only with less
than 125K points -- it takes more than ten times that! Yes, propagation is a
lot better now than it was in 1995, but participation has improved
considerably. IARU has evolved from a small, friendly, summertime affair into
yet another highly-competitive slugfest. Like CQ WPX, IARU is now attracting
top contesters, raising the ante for all of us.
And why not? This is a great contest! As many of the 3830 posts agree, IARU has
an excellent format. A 24-hour DX contest forces you to optimize every band
opening because you get only one chance. The zone/HQ mults and the QSO points
force you to S&P, unlike some contests where big stations can just call CQ and
let the mults/points come to them. In short, it takes strategy and skill to do
well.
Unfortunately, it also takes some aluminum high up in the sky, and that appears
to have been my downfall. I'm far back in the pack and my NH rival (and pal)
KR1G beat me handily for the second year in a row. Despite the fact that I love
this contest, there's something very frustrating about it -- I can't seem to
improve my score by very much. While I've had strong improvement from year to
year in ARRL SS CW, CQ WW CW, ARRL DX CW and CQ WPX CW, I seem to be stuck in a
rut in IARU CW. I won NH CW-only in 1999 with 1.1M points -- 1772 QSOs and 145
mults. Ted was right behind me with about 900K. Last year, 2000, I had 1.19M
points -- 1816 QSOs and 165 mults. Ted beat me with 1.39M points -- 1807 QSOs
and 188 mults. Obviously, the difference was in the mults, so this year I
resolved to make a big improvement in that department (and not just in IARU.)
But even with 199 mults, I couldn't match Ted's score from last year: I did
only 1709 QSOs for 1.29M points. Ted's as-yet unreported score for this year is
something like 1.59M -- 1911 QSOs and 207 mults. While both our scores are
improving, Ted is making strong progress and I'm just poking along. Why?
Well, he has much bigger and higher antennas, but that's not the whole story.
Not to toot my own horn, but I beat Ted in all three of the big CW contests
this year, despite his considerable advantage in aluminum: my two tribanders on
short towers (one at 70' and one at 50') can't hold a candle to Ted's two
100-footers stacked with monobanders, my 40M 4-square should be topped by his
2-el monobander, and my 80M delta loop can't keep up with his 4-square. He's
got a bunch of beverages, I have just one. Ted likes to say that he tries to
beat me with aluminum and I try to beat him with skill. There's some truth to
that, but he's closing the gap on skill a lot faster that I am on the hardware.
Further, Ted just started using SO2R this year, and it takes quite a while to
get used to it. As I recall, Ted had some time conflicts in each of the big CW
contests that prevented an optimal performance. This time, he sent me an e-mail
before IARU telling me he was going to kick my butt. I think he was ready for
this one...
I did try to up the ante on hardware, in my own small way. I put up a 5-el 15M
monobander, fixed NE, on a 50' portable military surplus mast in the side yard.
The XYL agreed that this was OK as long as it disappeared after the contest.
Interestingly, the difference between the monobander and my tribanders isn't as
dramatic as one would think. It's not like the 20 dB difference between my TH-7
and the GAP vertical -- something that makes you say, "Aha!". You can't tell
the difference on the S-meter, but if you switch back and forth quickly while
listening to the same signal, there's a definite surge in the sound on the
monobander. It's probably just a couple of dB, but I noticed a definite
improvement during the contest. I felt loud on 15M, and often had that sense of
relatively easy copy that I had at K1RX in last year's CQ WPX CW. I think it'll
be worth it to find a permanent location to hide the tower and monobander, but
it isn't going to win any contests for me.
As everyone noted, propagation was not as good this year as last year, and was
pretty poor late Saturday morning. While I started off with three 100+ hours,
they were in the low hundreds. Usually that's not a good sign. 20M picked up
late in the afternoon, and stayed good all night, but the rate got very slow on
all bands from the wee hours until about 1100z. At least it did here. I knew my
rates were low, but figured everyone would be in the same boat. But that's not
what the scores show. K5ZD and KQ2M put up incredible scores this year. Were we
in the same contest? I certainly made a few tactical errors, and zoned out a
couple of times, but my feeling is that when propagation is poor, my low
antennas lose a greater proportion of score than high antennas. I think the
effect is exacerbated in mid-summer, perhaps because of my slightly more
northerly location, especially on 10M and 80M. Maybe that's why I'm not moving
forward much in IARU. Anyway, it's food for thought.
Another curious aspect of this contest was the large number of dupes I worked:
66. That's about what I've been working in the big 48-hour contests. I was
really surprised when my first dupe came in the first hour -- usually they
don't start showing up until at least halfway through the contest. The winner
was RZ6HN, who worked me *five* times on 20M! I'll bet he has WC1M, WK1M, WY1M,
WC1N and WY1N in his log. There were several other calls that seemed to pop up
more than twice. I'm wondering if I had more dupes because the poor propagation
and low antennas were making it more difficult for them to copy me. What's
weird is that I didn't feel like I had all that much trouble copying in this
contest, despite the periods of poor propagation. Did anyone else work an
unusually high percentage of dupes?
There's another possibility. I worked almost exclusively low in the CW band, as
I've done in all the other CW contests this year. Maybe I wasn't hearing big
USA stations underneath me and slightly off to one side or the other, and this
affected my rate. Usually when this happens I hear a lot of stations calling
that don't respond to me -- i.e., they're actually calling the other guy. I
didn't get the feeling that this was happening much, but perhaps I was
mistaken. Conventional wisdom would have it that my station isn't loud enough
to hold a frequency that low, in the face of so many big guns, but I haven't
had that sense. In the next contest I'm going to spend more time trying
different spots around the band.
I wasn't as ready for this contest as I could have been, but I don't think my
condition rises to the level of an excuse. I got only five hours sleep the
night before the contest, but that's not all that unusual for me on non-contest
nights. It probably contributed to my zoning out Sunday morning, but otherwise
I felt pretty good. I'd have prefered 8+ hours the night before, but I did
manage to get a reasonable amount of sleep the week before, which I think is
more important. I did have to rush to build and raise the monobander on Friday,
which took about 6 hours, and that drained a little energy. The worst problem
was running out of time to food shop, forcing me to scrounge around the house
at the last minute for non-carb contest food. The menu was odd, to say the
least: canned tuna, olives, artichoke hearts, a little piece of cheese. I would
have liked more time to plan my band strategy, but I'm not convinced that this
would have helped.
I'll keep trying in this contest, but it might take a stint as a guest op to
prove my theories (or reveal me as a poor workman who blames his tools...) No
matter what, I love this contest!
73, Dick WC1M
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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