ARRL DX Contest, CW
Call: K3ZO
Operator(s): K3ZO
Station: K3ZO
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: MD
Operating Time (hrs): 39.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 39 28
80: 191 54
40: 495 75
20: 822 88
15: 965 96
10: 851 92
-------------------
Total: 3363 433 Total Score = 4,368,537
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
The first half of the contest was a delight! I'm glad I began on 40
and hit 80 and 160 fairly hard the first night. The storm began as
rain instead of snow and was light enough so that there was no precip
static, but the humidity doused all the line noises. I could hear
everything!
On Saturday night I had a good Asian run on 15 and then 20. My new
time-off schedule to account for advancing age now has me taking a
solid five and a half hours off in the wee hours of Sunday morning.
That way I'm fit to go the whole day Sunday in pretty good shape. It
does mean that I miss the European sunrise opening on 40 the second
day.
I quit at 0503 UTC Sunday with 2301 QSOs in the log and
receiving conditions still quite good. What a rude shock I got when I
got back into the operating chair at 1030 UTC. I had planned to work
a few mults on 80 and 40 before heading off to the higher bands, but
the whining snow static on the 40 meter Yagi meant that all I could
hear were a few loud Caribbean stations, so after picking up 4 mults
there I went off to 20.
Thank goodness for quads! While my 20 and 15 meter Yagis were pretty
much immobilized on receive, my 10, 15 and 20 meter 4-element quads
were quiet except for a bit of reflected snow static from the Yagis.
Fortunately when I beam Europe on the quads the Yagis are behind me!
It made for some interesting transmit/receive antenna operations on
the FT-1000-MP. For example on 15 most of the time I transmitted on
the high 8-el Yagi and received on the lower 4-el quad. All was fine
until I decided to go to 40 at 2120 UTC to make up for some of the
QSOs I had foregone by sleeping during the European sunrise opening.
I found a good spot and started running and had a nice pile, but after
only about five minutes the snow static had started up again. I tried
all my other antennas but only the 80 meter sloper could hear much and
after picking out the loud ones like RW2F and RU1A I couldn't pull out
any of the others so with apologies for the "snow QRN" I went to 10
where there hadn't been much from Japan the first day so I figured
there would be enough action there to keep me busy. During the last
half hour I went back to 40 and by that time almost all signals were
loud enough to be heard on the 80 meter sloper. I went up the band
S&P and there were still enough stations not in my log to make an S&P
excursion worthwhile, including JY9QJ for a new mult.
In addition to the enhanced ground conductivity on the low bands,
there's another advantage to being down in a hole like I am. The
winds here were not so ferocious and all antennas and rotators
performed flawlessly all through the contest.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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