CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: WC1M
Operator(s): WC1M
Station: WC1M
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 2
80: 85
40: 902
20: 1075
15: 103
10: 22
------------
Total: 2189 Prefixes = 811 Total Score = 5,689,165
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
That was painful...
Like last year, the contest opened pretty well this year. I had six good hours
in a row, the first four over 100/hour. Also like last year, I took a three hour
nap after the 40m runs. That's where the similarity ended. When I woke up and
got on the radio at 1000z, 20 wasn't open yet. That's not unusual, so I started
operating and waited for the pileups. And waited. And waited. They never came.
I noticed the K index was up to 5, and with low flux that pretty much killed
the bands. In 11 years of serious contesting, I can't recall 20 never really
opening to Europe in the morning, or a contest in which I never had a 100 hour
on 20. The rate on 20 peaked at 70/hr at 1300z Saturday, and never got better.
Pretty bad for W1's money band to Europe. Anyway, my rate sheet below says it
all. Normally I would include a rate sheet only if I won or had a very high
score. But I'm including this one because it's so bad. My score is down almost
4 million points from last year. That has to be some kind of personal record,
but not a good one.
I imagine everyone had a tough time, but I wonder if we Northerly folks had it
a little tougher. AA3B, who beat me by about 8,000 points, says his score is
down 1.9 million from last year. Mine seems to be down a lot more. Maybe I'm
losing it :-) (Quiz: how could our scores be almost tied when Bud had 325 more
Qs and we were within 2 mults of each other?)
At one point in the contest I realized that the usual strategic decisions
didn't have a lot of relevance this year. Picking off-times was a matter of
luck: propagation was up and down from hour to hour. Either it varied in your
favor, or it didn't.
I have no idea who was SO this year, but I think the chances are good that Alex
(at KC3R) will win again. He was about 500 Qs ahead of me with several hours to
go, so I knew I was way out of the running.
Had a few technical problems. Saturday morning the Acom amp started tripping
with arc faults and high grid current. It only happened with a particular set
of antennas, which have their own SO2R setup and coax runs. My system relies on
having those antennas available for the second radio, so I took an hour break
and went looking for the problem. Taking a break at 1200z Saturday would
normally be insane, but this year it was perfectly OK - the rate was very low,
and I was able to make it up later. Eventually I traced it to a bad coax
pigtail between the hardline and lightning suppressor at the house. At least, I
think that's what it was. After finally finding some N-to-PL259 adapters, I
replaced the coax and the trouble went away. But later it returned, this time
with faults indicating QSK sequencing errors. I happened to be testing some
unreleased software for the K3, which introduces high-speed QSK, and that might
have had something to do with it. Turning off QSK eliminated the problem for the
rest of the contest. But that doesn't explain why it stopped for a long time
after I replaced the pigtail. Looks like I have some troubleshooting to do.
I also had three blue screens with my new Windows 7 installation. Luckily,
Windows 7 boots a lot faster than XP, or those BOSDs would have cost me a lot
more time. Not sure what's going on, but it always seems to happen when
PowerSDR-IF is running. It probably has something to do with the old BIOS in my
(originally) XP machine not handling the USB port to the soundcard correctly for
Windows 7. Yet another troubleshooting session lies ahead for that.
Lastly, I was testing an experimental version of my AntennaMaster switching
software, which I revised to be client-server for multi-op stations. Had a few
glitches with that, too.
As you can see, I like to live dangerously when contesting: new Windows 7
installation, testing new K3 firmware, testing new antenna switching
software... kinda dumb, huh?
But all in all, I doubt the interruptions lost me any significant points. It
was 99% conditions and the usual operator errors.
I love WPX, but I have to say this might have been the only year I really
didn't enjoy myself thoroughly. Guess I got spoiled last year. Nevertheless,
I'll see you next year!
73, Dick WC1M
QSO/Pref by hour and band
Hour 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm
OffTime
D1-0000Z --+-- --+-- 102/88 12/11 --+-- --+-- 114/99 114/99
D1-0100Z - - 108/79 12/12 - - 120/91 234/190
D1-0200Z - - 99/64 12/12 - - 111/76 345/266
D1-0300Z - - 89/53 14/11 - - 103/64 448/330
D1-0400Z - 3/3 80/35 5/5 - - 88/43 536/373
D1-0500Z 1/0 5/4 66/28 1/1 - - 73/33 609/406
D1-0600Z - - 29/13 - - - 29/13 638/419
40
D1-0700Z - - - - - - 0/0 638/419
60
D1-0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 638/419
60
D1-0900Z - - - 5/2 - - 5/2 643/421
51
D1-1000Z - - - 26/11 - - 26/11 669/432
D1-1100Z - - 5/5 33/14 - - 38/19 707/451
D1-1200Z - - - 2/0 - - 2/0 709/451
58
D1-1300Z - - - 70/21 - - 70/21 779/472
2
D1-1400Z - - - 5/2 - - 5/2 784/474
56
D1-1500Z - - - 57/14 8/2 - 65/16 849/490
5
D1-1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 55/15 1/1 --+-- 56/16 905/506
D1-1700Z - - - 32/7 5/1 3/1 40/9 945/515
D1-1800Z - - - 46/11 24/8 1/0 71/19 1016/534
D1-1900Z - - - 44/11 6/5 5/2 55/18 1071/552
D1-2000Z - - - 54/12 - 3/1 57/13 1128/565
D1-2100Z - - - 62/16 8/4 - 70/20 1198/585
D1-2200Z - - 17/8 39/8 2/2 - 58/18 1256/603
D1-2300Z - - 57/15 13/5 - - 70/20 1326/623
D2-0000Z --+-- --+-- 34/10 8/6 --+-- --+-- 42/16 1368/639
D2-0100Z - 13/2 48/24 - - - 61/26 1429/665
D2-0200Z 1/1 16/3 36/4 1/0 - - 54/8 1483/673
D2-0300Z - 39/8 19/4 - - - 58/12 1541/685
D2-0400Z - 5/0 34/6 - - - 39/6 1580/691
D2-0500Z - - 1/0 1/0 - - 2/0 1582/691
58
D2-0600Z - - - - - - 0/0 1582/691
60
D2-0700Z - - - - - - 0/0 1582/691
60
D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 1582/691
60
D2-0900Z - - - - - - 0/0 1582/691
60
D2-1000Z - 3/0 2/0 18/5 - - 23/5 1605/696
20
D2-1100Z - 1/1 15/0 23/4 1/0 - 40/5 1645/701
D2-1200Z - - - 28/9 3/0 - 31/9 1676/710
D2-1300Z - - - 20/3 8/0 2/0 30/3 1706/713
D2-1400Z - - - 28/8 2/0 - 30/8 1736/721
D2-1500Z - - - 25/9 10/1 - 35/10 1771/731
D2-1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 33/10 20/2 6/2 59/14 1830/745
D2-1700Z - - - - 4/0 - 4/0 1834/745
57
D2-1800Z - - - 57/9 - 2/0 59/9 1893/754
8
D2-1900Z - - - 71/9 - - 71/9 1964/763
D2-2000Z - - - 44/8 - - 44/8 2008/771
D2-2100Z - - 3/1 53/8 - - 56/9 2064/780
D2-2200Z - - 10/1 57/18 1/0 - 68/19 2132/799
D2-2300Z - - 48/8 9/4 - - 57/12 2189/811
Total: 2/1 85/21 902/4461075/311 103/26 22/6
Continents
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total %
EU 0 29 566 603 1 0 1199 54.8
NA 2 50 301 414 73 12 852 38.9
AS 0 0 13 24 0 0 37 1.7
SA 0 5 10 21 27 10 73 3.3
AF 0 1 5 6 2 0 14 0.6
OC 0 0 6 6 0 0 12 0.5
Prefixes
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total
3V 1 1
4J 2 2
4L 1 1 2
4O 1 1
4U1I 1 1
4U1V 1 1
4X 1 2 3
5B 3 4 7
9A 11 9 20
A6 1 1 2
A7 1 1
CE 3 3 6
CM 1 1
CN 1 1
CT 1 3 4
CT3 1 1 1 3
CX 2 1 3 6
DL 5 91 112 208
E7 1 3 7 11
EA 2 17 28 1 48
EA8 1 2 4 1 8
EA9 1 1
EI 3 6 9
ER 4 1 5
ES 1 1 2
EU 1 10 3 14
F 1 23 26 50
FG 1 1
FM 1 1 1 3
FY 1 1
G 1 21 37 59
GD 1 1
GI 1 1
GJ 1 1 2
GM 6 7 13
GU 1 1 2
GW 2 1 3
HA 2 18 22 42
HB 1 5 4 10
HK 1 2 1 4
HR 1 1
HS 1 1
I 2 23 37 62
IT9 5 5
K 2 39 248 368 61 11 729
KH6 1 3 4
KL 2 2
KP2 1 3 2 2 1 9
KP4 1 1 1 3
LA 6 3 9
LU 1 1 6 6 1 15
LX 1 1 1 3
LY 10 7 17
LZ 18 14 32
OE 5 5 10
OH 5 6 11
OH0 1 1
OK 1 42 38 81
OM 4 13 15 32
ON 1 10 13 24
OX 1 1 2
OZ 1 7 8
P4 2 2 2 1 7
PA 14 25 39
PJ2 1 1 2 2 2 8
PY 2 3 5 7 4 21
S5 2 26 25 53
SM 9 6 15
SP 1 25 22 48
SV 5 6 11
SV9 1 1
TA 2 1 3
TF 1 1
TI 1 1 2 4
TK 2 1 3
UA 46 27 73
UA2 1 1 1 3
UA9 3 9 12
UN 1 2 3
UR 1 45 16 62
V2 1 1
VE 10 40 34 3 87
VK 1 1
XE 6 6
YB 1 1
YL 4 6 10
YN 1 1
YO 16 15 31
YS 1 1 2
YU 1 19 24 44
YV 1 1 1 1 1 5
Z3 1 2 3
ZC4 1 1
ZL 4 2 6
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
|