Hi all,
what a pity. Days of preparation, endless stress, and finally
OM Murphy shows up and wants to be an operator, too...
1. Mr. Murphy felt like the island of Crete had had a long enough
hot and dry summer, and it was time for some good rain now.
Just in time for the start of the contest he sent a fine storm.
2. The rain was very heavy, the winds were very high, so some
masts in the electricity backbone gave up, and on Saturday,
0446z the lights went off in the whole area. I had just started
a first 40m run only a few minutes ago.
3. Every one hour or so the power came back for one or two
seconds...
4. After more than seven hours (!) the power was coming back at
exactly 1200z - and went away after only 31 minutes and 137
QSOs on 15 meters...
5. At 1334z it seemed to go on again, but only for one minute and
two QSOs on 10m...
6. At 1514z there was another minute and two QSOs...
7. At 1536z Saturday (exactly at sunset) the power came back
and stayed for the rest of the contest.
8. This was exactly 10 hours and 16 minutes with no activity :-(
----------------------------------------------------------------
LESSON LEARNT: I will *NEVER* try a serious entry in a contest
again without having a backup power system stand-by. !!!!!!!
If not available right away, I will rent one, whereever I will be.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Imagine your psychology, when you just sit there, not able to do
anything, but anxiously waiting for that damn electricity coming
back... And the clock is ticking every second... These ten hours
would have been good enough for some 2,000 QSOs and a good
number of multipliers...
But Mr. Murphy was not yet happy with his work. He had also
decided that he wanted to play with the Cubical Quad (2-ele 40
+ 4-ele each 20/15/10) on the 30 meters high tower. He made
the rotator brackets break, and had the antenna turn some times
around itself until the coax cable cut off... And nobody
wanted to climb up the tower to fix it under the high winds...
The other antenna was a Force12 C31XR mounted at 15 meters
height, pointing fixed to the USA. And I had a Cushcraft R7
vertical, which was connected to the second radio first. These
two antennas now came over the Stackmatch. Thus there are
way "too many" Europeans in the log, and way too few DX.
The average points-per-QSO is too low, and ... grumble, mumble,
*&#%"=$/&* !!!!!
I did not have a 40m antenna for the second night at all, because
(Hello Mr. Murphy...) the shack was accessible by an elevator
only, no stairs. No electricity, no elevator... I was "caught" in
the shack and couldn't do anything but walking around, staring
out of the window and lying on the bed.
My plan was to operate most of the second night on 40m, and
therefore I had not operated the first night on 40m seriously.
Having a 2-ele Quad on 40m had certainly given great fun...
But when the power had come back it was sunset (see above),
and I did not have a solution ready.
On Sunday morning I made a 50 minute break to make a 40m dipole
and hang it from the balcony (10 meters high) to the garden
(2 meters high), at least to work the most important European
multipliers during the last hours. I was surprised that later stations
like E30NA, YB0AI, A50A, 9M8R, ZS4TX, EK6CC, 4L4MM, VP2E,
V47KP, D44TC, 9K9X and some Japanese found their way through
that wire into my log... I better don't even think how things could
have been, when the Quad had been still available...
By the way ZS4TX: Bernie had called in on 10 meters, and within
five minutes we could work on every other band but 160 meters.
All were double-mult QSOs, no other ZS in the log. TNX Bernie!
Of course, I am very disappointed. The investment and all efforts
were way too high for that score. If there had been no storm,
no power failures, and the Quad available, I was sure to having
over 12 million points (actual EU record 10.4M). Then it had only
been a question of the other "competition".
If, when, why, what, %($§&§/#* again. :-(
Anyway, thanks for all QSOs and see you in the CW leg as part of
the OE2S M/S team.
73 Ben
DL6FBL
CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 2001
Call: SV9CVY (op DL6FBL)
Category: SOAB HP (Murphy assisted)
BAND QSO QSO PTS PTS/QSO ZONES COUNTRIES
160 89 108 1.21 7 41
80 133 192 1.44 11 57
40 139 258 1.86 17 61
20 1961 4720 2.41 33 113
15 1200 2607 2.17 32 113
10 2367 4718 1.99 33 115
---------------------------------------------------
Totals 5889 12603 2.14 133 500 => 7,977,699
Operating time: 37 operating hours
Equipment Description:
Station 1: Kenwood TS-450S + Ameritron AL-1500
Station 2: Kenwood TS-850S + TenTec Titan
160m: Inverted Vee @ 25m
80m: Inverted Vee @ 25m
40m: 2-ele Quad for 15 minutes, afterwards sloping dipole @ 10m
20m: 4-ele Quad for 4 hours + Force12 C31XR (fixed to USA)
afterwards Force12 C31XR (fixed to USA) + Cushcraft R7 :-(
15m: C31XR (fixed to USA) + Cushcraft R7 :-(
10m: C31XR (fixed to USA) + Cushcraft R7 :-(
Club Affiliation: Bavarian Contest Club (BCC)
------------------------------------------------------------------
160 80 40 20 15 10 ALL percent
North America SSB 0 6 32 1310 573 1016 2937 49.0
South America SSB 0 0 0 26 29 60 115 1.9
Europe SSB 79 103 80 588 502 1207 2559 42.7
Asia SSB 8 17 19 69 90 91 294 4.9
Africa SSB 2 7 8 13 16 13 59 1.0
Oceania SSB 0 0 2 14 4 6 26 0.4
------------------------------------------------------------------
BREAKDOWN QSO/mults SV9CVY CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST
HOUR 160 80 40 20 15 10 HR TOT CUM TOT
0 12/17 1/2 ..... 97/36 ..... ..... 110/55 110/55
1 2/2 . . 215/26 . . 217/28 327/83
2 5/4 . . 187/4 . . 192/8 519/91
3 2/1 19/20 . 150/3 . . 171/24 690/115
4 . 5/3 54/28 90/4 . . 149/35 839/150
5 . . . . . . . 839/150
6 . . . . . . . 839/150
7 . . . . . . . 839/150
8 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 839/150
9 . . . . . . . 839/150
10 . . . . . . . 839/150
11 . . . . 1/2 . 1/2 840/152
12 . . . . 136/50 1/2 137/52 977/204
13 . . . . . 2/4 2/4 979/208
14 . . . . . . . 979/208
15 . . . . . 135/26 135/26 1114/234
16 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 312/25 312/25 1426/259
17 . . . . . 292/7 292/7 1718/266
18 . . . . . 249/9 249/9 1967/275
19 . . . . 163/20 30/13 193/33 2160/308
20 . . . . 195/10 . 195/10 2355/318
21 . . . 7/5 104/16 . 111/21 2466/339
22 31/13 18/19 . 3/4 28/0 . 80/36 2546/375
23 8/1 . . 209/10 . . 217/11 2763/386
0 15/3 39/8 ..... 5/5 ..... ..... 59/16 2822/402
1 . 29/0 . 163/6 . . 192/6 3014/408
2 2/2 . . 150/2 . . 152/4 3166/412
3 11/4 14/9 . 17/0 . . 42/13 3208/425
4 1/1 2/3 . 33/2 8/6 4/5 48/17 3256/442
5 . . . 146/7 6/3 9/5 161/15 3417/457
6 . . . 10/4 13/5 70/9 93/18 3510/475
7 . . . 1/1 129/5 25/6 155/12 3665/487
8 ..... ..... ..... 3/1 59/3 229/3 291/7 3956/494
9 . . . . . 57/0 57/0 4013/494
10 . . . 1/1 40/3 13/11 54/15 4067/509
11 . . . 1/1 10/4 209/6 220/11 4287/520
12 . . . . 34/0 115/1 149/1 4436/521
13 . . 5/2 1/1 114/1 . 120/4 4556/525
14 . . 7/8 24/4 3/3 62/4 96/19 4652/544
15 . . 8/11 1/1 3/1 151/3 163/16 4815/560
16 ..... 1/1 4/3 ..... ..... 204/0 209/4 5024/564
17 . 1/0 5/4 2/2 1/1 151/3 160/10 5184/574
18 . 2/2 13/6 3/3 1/2 45/4 64/17 5248/591
19 . . 32/6 1/1 88/0 1/1 122/8 5370/599
20 . 2/1 1/1 1/2 63/9 1/1 68/14 5438/613
21 . . 4/3 159/5 1/1 . 164/9 5602/622
22 . . 5/5 117/2 . . 122/7 5724/629
23 . . 1/1 164/3 . . 165/4 5889/633
DAY1 60/38 43/44 54/28 958/92 627/98 1021/86 ..... 2763/386
DAY2 29/10 90/24 85/50 1003/54 573/47 1346/62 . 3126/247
TOT 89/48 133/68 139/78 1961/146 1200/145 2367/148 . 5889/633
Bernd Och
BOC Computersysteme GmbH · Christian-Wirth-Str. 18 · 36043 Fulda
[T] 0661/9440-201 · [F] 0661/9440-100 · [E] bernd.och@boc.de
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