CQWW WPX Contest, SSB
Call: KT5J
Operator(s): N3BB
Station: N3BB
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Austin TX
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 6
80: 198
40: 751
20: 1268
15: 194
10: 39
------------
Total: 2456 Prefixes = 683 Total Score = 2,775,512
Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club
Comments:
Another difficult "learning experience" for me. Congrats to K5TR and NN5J (N5DX)
for outstanding efforts and results. W5WMU was in there as well. I haven't seen
Pat's score but it's cerain he did well. I'm a bit humbled, as I worked hard
but it just doesn't look good on the scoreboard. The WX report for here was
iffy, with storms forecasted for Saturday overnight. In fact WM5R got knocked
off the air and out of the contest at W5KFT from a storm fifty miles to my NW,
but all we got was QRN Saturday overnight.
I had hoped to come within 5% of K5TR, who I figured would win the "W5-W0 WRTC
region" but came out well below the cutoff point for being able to salvage any
qualifying score for WRTC. This weekend, along with the RDXC two weeks ago when
I lost an amplifier and was limited to SO1R for the most part, both are
discouraging. Lots of hard work. But they were contests, and I learned some
things.
For some reason, my K1EA DVP card would not accept the usual voice recordings,
cutting them of at one or two seconds. I finally got two QSL Messages" to
sort-of work. The usual one said "Thanks" and I got the F6 key (Quick QSL) to
accept "Thanks Kilo Tango Five Tango" spoken really fast. I got a CQ message to
work. So I limped through the contest with three barely decent recordings plus
the call sign. I had to speak fast and didn't feel the recorded call sign had
the fullest clarity.
To do well and have fun from this far west and south (Austin, Texas area) at
the solar cycle minimum, we need for 15 meters to open to EU and JA. If it
does, and does not to our north, we can do very well. In this contest, it did
not. We got no JAs on 15 and only a smattering of extreme southern EU. The EU
stations came in at 90 degrees and not the direct path for me. One JA station,
JH7XKO, called me on 15 but he was pee weak and I could never get the number
and scrubbed the QSO. he was "peaking," if that word can be used, at 270
degrees. We can get only the loud EU stations on 20, and it's very hard to run
EU on 20 meters. We can not run EU on 40 meters.
We can run JAs pretty well on 40 meters CW and SSB but the JAs seemed to
boycott this contest. 40 meters was excellent to Asia and the Pacific but all
those stations seemed content to stay down below 7100 and work one another.
Only a few called CQ and listened up, or called me split frequency. Fortunately
there were some VKs on 15 and 40, and that was a nice group of QSOs at times.
Most were right at the noise level for me.
K5TR called today and we compared notes briefly. He did a great job and managed
points this time, rather than QSO quantity. Of course he had a whole lot of QSOs
as well. But he is right. If I ever do a WPX again, and right now I don't want
to hear anything about any contest for a long time, I'll plan strategy around
points. One can have a better hour in the middle of the night working 15 or 20
six pointers than running Ws on 40 meters or 20 meters in the afternoon or
evening at one point per contact. But I had the flu the week before the
contest, and got pretty tired and really needed to take an off time to sleep.
Oh well. Excuses, excuses. Forgetaboutit!
TR does SO2R well on SSB as well as CW. I have the CW SO2R down pretty pat, but
have a lot to learn about SSB SO2R, On Sunday, I felt I was doing somewhat
better, but still am an SO2R novice on phone.
Thanks very much to Larry, K5OT, for use of his nice KJ5J call sign.
Some numbers:
Off Times (Zulu):
0617-0911
1243-1346
1713-1812
0215-1316
0549-0956
1533-1632
2106-2205
KT5J Rate Chart:
HOUR 160SSB 80SSB 40SSB 20SSB 15SSB 10SSB TOTAL ACCUM
---- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ----- -----
0 0 0 2 157 0 0 159 159
1 0 0 106 37 0 0 143 302
2 0 0 111 0 0 0 111 413
3 0 0 82 0 0 0 82 495
4 0 104 1 0 0 0 105 600
5 0 10 78 0 0 0 88 688
6 1 8 0 0 0 0 9 697
7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 697
8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 697
9 0 2 24 0 0 0 26 723
10 5 10 13 0 0 0 28 751
11 0 16 16 0 0 0 32 783
12 0 1 48 0 0 0 49 832
13 0 0 0 29 0 0 29 861
14 0 0 0 46 0 0 46 907
15 0 0 0 94 9 0 103 1010
16 0 0 0 140 3 0 143 1153
17 0 0 0 16 0 0 16 1169
18 0 0 0 36 21 0 57 1226
19 0 0 0 97 6 0 103 1329
20 0 0 0 64 18 0 82 1411
21 0 0 0 17 28 14 59 1470
22 0 0 0 35 3 15 53 1523
23 0 0 0 79 6 3 88 1611
0 0 0 7 21 26 1 55 1666
1 0 0 73 0 0 0 73 1739
2 0 0 43 0 0 0 43 1782
3 0 6 11 0 0 0 17 1799
4 0 15 11 0 0 0 26 1825
5 0 25 16 0 0 0 41 1866
6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1866
7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1866
8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1866
9 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1867
10 0 0 27 0 0 0 27 1894
11 0 0 40 0 0 0 40 1934
12 0 1 19 2 0 0 22 1956
13 0 0 0 27 0 0 27 1983
14 0 0 0 47 0 0 47 2030
15 0 0 0 49 0 0 49 2079
16 0 0 0 4 11 0 15 2094
17 0 0 0 34 10 0 44 2138
18 0 0 0 82 8 0 90 2228
19 0 0 0 29 10 3 42 2270
20 0 0 0 19 18 0 37 2307
21 0 0 0 0 3 0 3 2310
22 0 0 19 55 0 3 77 2387
23 0 0 3 52 14 0 69 2456
TOTAL 6 198 751 1268 194 39
73, and thanks for the contacts. There were some very fine operators and
stations in this thing. Congratulations.
Jim George N3BB-KT5J in 2008 WPX SSB
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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