CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: WC1M
Operator(s): WC1M
Station: WC1M
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 35.5
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 77
40: 707
20: 1391
15: 41
10: 0
------------
Total: 2216 Prefixes = 797 Total Score = 5,167,748
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Antennas:
160M - trapped vee @65' (broken)
80M - delta loop @75', trapped vee @65' (broken)
40M - 40-2CD @110', 4-square
20M - 4el SteppIR @96', C3E @50', 4-el @72'
15M - 4el SteppIR @96', C3E @50', 5-el @50'
10M - 4el SteppIR @96', C3E @50'
580' beverage aimed 20-degrees
All high-band yagis on separate towers (no vertical stacks)
Equipment:
Orion + Alpha 87A, FT-1000D + Acom 2000A, Writelog, TopTen and homebrew band
decoders and switches.
Congrats to NE4AA (K1TO) for an incredible score under poor conditions, and to
KC3R (LZ4AX) for another fine job.
15 was an absolute disaster here, never runable to EU and barely supporting a
handful of S&P contacts. Usually when that happens, stations down south kill us
northern New Englanders. I think that happened on 10 back in 2003, when K1TO
"crushed" me by 2 million points (as CQ so kindly put it.) But this year 15
wasn't much better for Dan than it was for me, a sure sign we're at the bottom
of the sunspot cycle. Dan beat me handily on 20, but it was 40 where he
obliterated everyone in the category.
Judging from Dan's continent breakdown, he used a different strategy on 40 than
I did. Dan had 48.6% EU and 45.8% US, while I had 58.4% EU and 35.7% NA. NU1R
and I have a running debate about the best strategy to win WPX (Ed won low
power as NV1N last year and will probably win again this year.) Ed tries to
balance running EU and USA, while I pound the heck out of EU, EU, EU. Ed's
theory is that you need the US prefixes. My theory is that EU will provide
plenty of prefixes, and the 6-pointers and 3-pointers are crucial. You can
boost the QSO total by running lots of US stations, but those one-pointers only
provide a small percentage of the bottom line points. Last year, I don't think I
turned any of KT1V's antennas off EU during the contest (some of the rotors were
broken anyway!) I just worked US off the back of the beams, and sometimes with
the South stack.
In WPX, rate is king -- you collect more prefixes by running than S&P, at least
in the high power category. Ed's theory makes more sense for low power stations
that can't sustain EU runs as effectively as high-power stations, particularly
on the low bands.
80m illustrates the point. NN1N once told me that 80m is a "sucker punch" in
WPX CW. Normally you can't run high rate to EU on 80 in the summer, so you end
up running a lot of US stations when you'd be better of running EU at a lower
rate on 40.
The pound-EU strategy worked for me last year from KT1V (well, Ted's super
station had something to do with it, too!) I had 69% EU and only 22.9% US. KC3R
had more QSOs than I did, but I had higher QSO points and more mults, resulting
in a higher total score. I haven't seen Alex's continent breakdown from last
year, but I bet he ran a higher percentage of US than I did. This year
conditions were so poor that it probably would have been better for me to do
some US runs instead of grinding out pathetically low rates to EU, particularly
on 40. I suspect that's what Dan did on 40. If you can run enough US stations
and get enough prefixes from them, without sacrificing a lot of EU QSO points,
then the 1-pointers and mults will add up. I guess the lesson for me is that
you have to adapt your strategy to conditions. I certainly considered turning
the beams and running US, but thought it might be a trap. Now I know it all
depends on conditions.
Pre-contest
I had hoped to complete my new tower before WPX CW, but increased demands from
work made that all but impossible. When I finished stacking the tower early
last winter, I had just enough time before the snow and cold set in to put up a
40-2CD at 110' and my old 4-el SteppIR at 96' on a TIC ring. That's much more
height than I've ever had here (previous max antenna height was 75'), but still
no stacks. Alas, I just didn't have time to install the two lower 4-el SteppIRs
on TIC rings. I'm sure that would have made a difference on 20, but probably
would have been only a marginal improvement on 15.
I did have time to make some repairs to the two antennas currently on the
tower. The huge Nor'easter that blew through New England in April did its share
of damage here. The 40-2CD was turned on the mast and the reflector twisted
about 20 degrees on the boom. I was able to fix both those problems without
removing the antenna, but it wasn't easy and required several climbs to the
top.
I also had to repair the SteppIR, and that was a much bigger job. Shortly after
installing it, I discovered the second director motor was broken. That
transformed the antenna from a 4-el on a 32-foot boom to a 3-el on an 18-foot
boom. For all I know, the antenna may have been broken since I got it over two
years ago -- the symptoms aren't obvious. It models to less than 1 dB
difference, so I used the antenna as-is in ARRL DX CW. Then last week W1ECT and
I trammed down the broken SteppIR and replaced it with one of the SteppIRs
intended for the lower positions in the stack. The new antenna works great. I'm
sure having all four elements made a difference, if only psychological.
Speaking of psychology, I wasn't in the best frame of mind going into the
contest -- heavy problems at work last week -- and didn't have time to prepare
as well as I'd have liked. Still, I was excited about the contest.
The Contest
It started out very well. I had my best opening hour on 40 in WPX, 123 Qs,
followed by a solid 109 hour. 40 was terrific, and I was really glad to have
the 2-el at 110'. It seemed almost as good as KT1V's monster 3-el at 140'
(later, I would wish I had that antenna!) I was so busy on 40 that I didn't
have time to pick off 20m Qs on the second radio. Then at 0200z the bottom fell
out. The rate plunged and didn't recover until late Saturday afternoon. Also,
there was no point using the second radio the first night -- 20 shutdown and
there was too much QRM on 80, even with the beverage.
I think it was sometime on the first night when the Orion started having
problems. It's my main run radio, being more immune to IMD than the 1000D and
having better dynamic range and selectivity. As K1GQ says in his CQ review,
despite a lot of quirks the Orion is the best contest receiver on the market.
For a few weeks I had been noticing periodic flickering of the LCD backlight.
This got more frequent as I pounded 40 with CQs on Friday night. Then suddenly,
in the middle of a CQ, there was a loud pop in the audio, the relays snapped,
and the Orion rebooted. Everything seemed OK after the reboot, so I continued
CQing. A few minutes later, it happened again. Pretty soon, I realized this was
going to keep happening. It always happened on transmit. It's a real drag to
have the radio reboot for 15-20 seconds as you start to send the exchange!
I had just updated to the latest firmware (I like to live dangerously), and
figured that was the cause. I reluctantly decided that a firmware reload was
necessary, so I setup the 1000D to do the CQing and went about backing up to
the previous version of the Orion firmware, which I had used successfully in
ARRL DX CW. This distraction certainly reduced my rate, but not too badly
considering the awful conditions. Unfortunately, backing up to the last release
didn't help -- the radio still periodically crapped out on transmit. I even went
back to the old version-1 firmware and the radio still failed. By that time I
knew it had to be a hardware problem. I figured the finals or voltage regulator
must be going. Luckily, the receiver still worked, so I could check for band
openings. But I was mighty bummed not to have full SO2R capabilities and not to
have my favorite run radio. OTOH, I rediscovered that the 1000D is an excellent
run radio, especially with the roofing filter mod.
40 was quite slow during the 0500z hour, so I decided to take my first sleep
break. I went a little longer this year, about 5 hours. I slept longer because
I figured 20 would open a little later this year, which turned out to be
correct. But I had no idea my best rate of the morning would 72 Qs in the 1100z
hour! It was simply awful, and very demoralizing. To make matters worse, 15
never opened to EU enough to run. I knew from propagation programs that this
was likely, but it was disheartening nonetheless. I did 850 Qs on 15 last year,
and less than 50 this year. Saturday morning was such a drag that I figured the
top ten would be populated by those who resisted the temptation to reach over
and switch off the radio.
I guess not having a second radio didn't affect my score all that much because
there was only one band open most of the day -- 20m. Many times throughout the
contest it felt like I was doing single-band 20 during the day and single-band
40 at night. A real grind.
I ran 20 all morning and afternoon. The low point was the 1600z hour, when the
rate dropped to 35. I should have taken an hour or two off at that point, but
didn't realize that was the nadir. 20 finally started improving about 1900z,
and opened real big for a couple of hours at 2100z, producing a 104 hour.
Sometime during the morning I realized that throttling the Orion back to 30W
kept it from crashing. That was enough to get 500W-750W out of the amp, which
was enough for effective S&P with gain antennas on the high bands. It wasn't
enough for 80m S&P, but worked most of the time on 40. I limped through the
rest of the contest that way. At least I had a mostly useful second radio.
I switched over to 40 about 2300z, but the rate was nowhere near what it had
been the night before, peaking at about 80 per hour during the 0000z hour. I
took some break time to eat between 0200z-0400z, which is usually a slow period
the second night. I got back on for about an hour at 0500z to see if EU sunrise
would help 40, but it didn't. I decided to get a good night's sleep to be
prepared for the morning runs.
I slept for close to 5 hours and got back on 20 at about 1030z. Once again, the
peak rate was a mere 80 per hour at 1300z, and 15 wasn't suitable for running.
Sunday morning and afternoon were more-or-less a repeat of Saturday, only with
lower rates and a lower bottom. This time I took an hour off at 1700z. 1600z
probably had lower rate, but I was getting some good mults and put off the
break for an hour. Once again, 20 started picking up at 1900z, and got pretty
good during the 2100z and 2200z hours.
Both mornings, I S&Ped 15 for EU Qs and mults. Not much there. From the reports
posted so far, I may have missed a runable moment or two on 15. I never heard a
peep on 10. Guess I missed the sporadic-E opening. But I doubt that missing
brief openings on 15 and 10 cost me a significant number of points.
I finished up the contest running 40 and S&Ping 20 during the 2300z hour, for
about 60 Qs and 12 mults. Both this year and last, the rate was quite good for
the last three hours or so. I added 23 mults the last two hours, which is a lot
for the end of a contest. It was well worth scheduling breaks to hit the last
three hours.
Not much action from Asia this year -- only 2.4%. I worked 12 JA stations, one
of them on 40, and 23 UA9/UA0 stations, two on 40. In both cases, they came in
on 20m during the morning runs on Sunday. The only other over-the-pole path I
worked was when I found 9M2CNC calling CQ at the top of 20 on Saturday
afternoon.
Even without the stack, I'm pretty happy with the flexibility of my antennas.
The 40m 4-square turned out to be a great supplement to the high 2-el beam.
Sometimes I was able to copy serial numbers on the 4-square that were lost in
the static on the 2-el. Other times, the 4-square let me quickly work a weak US
station to the SE or SW. Finally, the 4-square revealed that what I thought was
HP1AA was really coming from EU and was 5P1AA! I left the C3E pointed south for
the whole contest, and it came in very handy many times. The big 4-el on the 72'
tubular crankup was also very useful for switching to other directions quickly,
and worked well in parallel with the SteppIR when EU and AS were open together
briefly on Sunday morning.
One last note on the Orion: Late Sunday afternoon, I rearranged my position to
relieve the fatigue. I have a wireless keyboard, which allowed me to kick back
the chair and put my feet up. I reached over to grab the Orion's remote VFO
pod, and as I pulled the cable the Orion crashed. I quickly discovered that the
pod cable runs right over the Orion's 12VDC cable, close to the chassis. Pulling
on the pod cable had wiggled the power cable, causing the Orion to crash and
reboot. I pulled the plug at the radio end and found that it was charred brown
on the hot side. It appeared that this loose connection might be the source of
the crash problem: as the Orion generates heat, the connector loses continuity
and the voltage drops below the Orion's threshold. I tried cleaning the
connector and bending the pins for a better fit. That eliminated the backlight
flicker, but the radio still crashed after transmitting for a few minutes at
max power. After the contest, I found that no amount of fiddling with the
connector would fix the continuity problem. Giving it a good wiggle would
consistently cause the connection to be lost. I'm not excited about replacing
the PC-mounted connector with a new one. I think the design is flawed, almost
guaranteed to eventually cause a failure from the cable flexing the connector
against the fixed PC board. I'm now trying to devise a better way to secure the
cable. I'm hoping that will solve the crashing problem once and for all, and
save the radio a trip to Tennessee.
Well, another long story, but I enjoyed telling it almost as much as I enjoyed
the contest. Hope you enjoyed both, too.
73, Dick WC1M
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