CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 2002
Call: OH6NIO
Category: Single Operator Assisted
Power: High Power
Band: All Band
Mode: SSB
Country: Finland
Zone: 15
On-time: 37 hours
BAND QSO QSO PTS PTS/QSO ZONES COUNTRIES
160 24 25 1.04 4 18
80 60 73 1.22 7 45
40 146 232 1.59 18 69
20 350 761 2.17 34 115
15 563 1358 2.41 33 114
10 419 960 2.29 32 132
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Totals 1562 3407 2.18 128 493 => 2,116,989
All reports sent were 59 15, unless otherwise noted.
Equipment Description: FT-1000MP + 2x3-500ZG, IC-765 100W, 160m inv vee, 80m
vertical, 40m 2 el yagi + vertical, 20m 4el/4el stack + 3el EU + 3el JA +
3el mult, 15m 5el/5el stack + 4el eu + 5el JA + 4 el mult, 10m 5el + 3el EU
+ 4 el mult.
Remarks:
The goals for this contest were just to have some fun and to try to test my
new radio, computer network and my new multiplier antennas and learn how to
use them and of course trying to work many of my old radio friends.
My sore throat was not ok for long pile-ups so a lot of S&P with the help of
my voice-keyer was the name of the game. The poor propagation also "helped"
me in that respect.
The weekend was very windy and I often realized that the wind torque had
turned my main-antennas off the correct direction. It seems that I'll need
to figure out some kind of a brake for the main tower. Well I heard on
Sunday from PA7MM that they had F12 winds blowing there. By Sunday the wind
had calmed down in Finland.
Saturday was way down from normal with poor propagation (A-index 44). I
could not get any decent runs. I was mostly just S&P and searching for
mults. KC1XX was heard just faintly on 80m in the morning but no QSO. Then I
went to 40m and suddenly the SWR of the 40m beam skyrocketed and I had to
change the band again. Odd enough afterwards the 40m beam worked perfectly.
Later when I was S&P on 20m I noticed that N2RM was only 59+5dB when he
should have been at least 30db over. Because the propagation was so poor it
was nice to see that the DX-cluster worked fine almost all weekend. It
really made my contest much more interesting. On Saturday there was only a
one-hour period when the connection was lost. Later on Sunday we lost the
connection at 18Z and it did not come back anymore.
On Sunday the propagation improved a bit but it was not too good. Especially
the JA's were not coming through at all. It was around 0720Z when I broke 1M
points. In the afternoon we had some propagation to USA on 10m but the
signals were generally lower than normally. In the evening we also had a
brief opening on 15m. One highlight of the contest was when I heard one
Italian operator (I cannot remember the call) on 40m calling his version of
CQ by singing it in a funny way. Yes he really was singing. I had to listen
to him for a couple of minutes. Fortunately my VOX was switched-off at that
moment. Yes, I was almost rolling on the floor with my eyes in tears! At
2146Z I finally reached 2M points well before the end of the contest.
The lower bands were just awful and running 100W on 160m did not help at
all.
In this contest I had connected my radios first time with my computers. It
was a lot of fun to grab the cluster spots without having to turn the VFO
all the time. Earlier when I used only the cluster connection, CW-keying and
nettsr-networking everything worked just fine. Now when I added the
rig-controls CT crashed more than 10 times during the weekend. I'll have to
test the radio connections in the future. In the next contests I will also
try to test the band decoders to change the antennas automatically.
Maybe it was just because of the poor propagation that made it more
difficult to break through the big pile-ups than before but I also feel that
the discipline of the callers has again gone much worse. Many times the
people were just calling and calling without listening. I also noticed some
DX that gave their ID very rarely and when they did they were covered by the
QRM. Well this happens in almost every contest in some extent but when I
heard some stations working split or by numbers I quickly spun the dial with
disgust.
Overall I am satisfied because everything worked very fine and I did work
the highest multiplier count ever on CQWW SSB with such a poor propagation.
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