CQ/RJ WW RTTY WPX Contest
Call: ZC4DW
Operator(s): G0DEZ
Station: ZC4DW
Class: SOSB/20 LP
QTH: KM65wc
Operating Time (hrs): 27
Summary:
Band QSOs Pts
-----------------
80:
40:
20: 500 1436
15:
10:
-----------------
Total: 500 1436 Prefixes = 304 Total Score = 436,544
Club: Chiltern DX Club
Comments:
Observations:
20m opened right on cue just as expected both days, but the N. American opening
around sunrise did not happen. Fortunately though, the path to Japan was open
both mornings - which was a pleasant and unexpected surprise.
It seems 20m propagation was better to my East, rather than to my West. This
resulted in twice as many JA stations compared to USA.
Sadly, the predicated 20m late evening opening to the States never materialised
either. I only heard about a dozen big-gun US signals on 20m. W6IHG was
consistently readable, but failed to answer my calls. KL7AC was coming in with
auroral flutter over the pole, but again could not read me.
South American and Carribean signals were very strong. I'm glad I had time left
towards the end to pick up some useful mults from that part of the world. The
one exception was LO7H who was endlessly s9 but couldn't copy me.
Apologies to PJ7/W1CX who I had incorrectly logged as PA7/W1CX on our first QSO.
The software didn't flag as dupe and I couldn't find the original QSO anywhere
in the log.
With DX Cluster allowed, I have to agree with Phil SUP about a few questionable
spots. EA5BY was spotting EA5EG, and EA5EG kept reciprocating the favour.
Perhaps they struck a deal before the contest, which of course is forbidden by
the rules and of course is difficult to prove.
It was blatantly obvious that T77CD was spotting stations on his own run freq of
14091.5, this is very poor practice and certainly against the spirit of the
contest. K0WV was another station who clearly spotted everything on his run freq
of 14104.8 which I think it pathetic to be honest.
I also noticed a worrying increase in people using AFC and NET turned on whilst
in S & P mode. This is a bad habit, and is the major reason why stations call
off frequency. One South American station who was running, either had bad TX
drift, or his AFC & NET were turned on; he kept drifing all over the place on
each transmission. It was a nightmare but quite amusing following him!
Setup:
FT-1000MP
Inverted-L
75 Watts
Writelog 10.39 + MMTTY plugin
Kantronics TNC + soundcard parallel
73
Dez
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