CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: N0AX
Operator(s): N0AX
Station: N0AX
Class: SOAB LP
QTH: MO
Operating Time (hrs): 26
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 5 2 2
80: 57 15 35
40: 67 15 33
20: 234 26 81
15: 51 16 30
10: 2 2 2
------------------------------
Total: 416 76 183 Total Score = 278,943
Club: Western Washington DX Club
Comments:
First DX contest from the Midwest since 1982 and with a very simple station as
described in the Contest Update newsletter
(http://www.arrl.org/contest/update). One radio, one wire, one operator, two
ears, and two pieces of hacksaw blade comprising a paddle - just like the
Goodle Days. Every QSO came with a big helping of that "Wow!" sauce! To help
the numerous visitors understand what was going on, I even put up a ham radio
world map and stuck pins in for each new country - since I was S&P all weekend,
this was easy to do and a lot of fun as they asked, "Are you going to work
Greenland?" (maybe, found one on Sunday morning) and "How come there aren't any
pins in the US?" and then having them cheer when they saw a new pin added in
their favorite country, such as VK or KL7 or G. (This is fun - if you're doing
a casual effort, quilting pins are cheap and visible to let everybody see your
progress without disturbing your concentration.)
Best contest moment - discovering a 5H3 calling relatively unmolested on 20 CW
just before I was going to pull the plug for a break on Sunday about local
noon. That "599 37" sure catches one's ear! So if could bag Zone 37, what
else was on? I kept going and wound up discovering a very weak 9J2 for Zone
36. Way up at the top end of the band, a ZS and a TO from Reunion were handing
out zones 38 and 39 - why not give them a try through the big pileups? Double
bingo! So within about 20 minutes, four majorly exciting zones were logged
after I almost shut the station down. Moral of the story, of course, is to
keep that VFO knob turning.
Strangest contest moment - realizing that I did not hear one single OH station
all weekend. Whatever happened in the ionosphere made northern Zone 15 quite
rare from Missouri. I did find SM, ES and LY on 80 meters of all bands, but
not a peep from the dominant signals I'd grown accustomed to hearing from
Scandinavia. Nary an LA or OZ, either. Weird, but that's life at the solar
minimum.
Equipment
FT100D transceiver
105' doublet, 10 m high, fed with open-wire and MFJ-974HB balanced-line tuner.
N1MM software
Microham CW Keyer and "The Band Saw" homemade paddle
Thanks for all the QSOs - I'm letting the doublet have the night off :-)
73, Ward N0AX
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
______________________________________________
3830 mailing list
3830@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/3830
|