CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: MJ/W1NN
Operator(s): W1NN
Station: GJ3DVC
Class: SOAB(TS) HP
QTH: Jersey
Operating Time (hrs): 35
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 13
80: 259
40: 413
20: 1017
15: 555
10: 123
------------
Total: 2380 Prefixes = 740 Total Score = 3,162,760
Club: Mad River Radio Club
Comments:
Thanks to the members of the Jersey Amateur Radio Society welcoming me to their
station and to member Phil GJ4CBQ for providing exceptional support and
assistance to get the station ready for the contest.
I arrived on the island on Wednesday afternoon so I had 2.5 days to get ready
for the contest. Starting time for the major contests in this time zone is 1
AM local on Saturday morning, a very difficult time unless you are able to get
a good rest before the contest. Jersey, by the way, along with Guernsey,
belongs to the Channel Islands, which are a Crown Dependency of Great Britain.
They have a semi-independent status in some areas but for amateur radio they are
regulated by the same Office of Communications that regulates the rest of Great
Britain. I believe their status is similar to that of Bermuda or the British
Virgin Islands. To my surprise, Jersey issues its own stamps and currency (the
Jersey pound), although normal GBP are accepted. The island has an area of 45
square miles and a population of 91,000. It is a lush, green and beautiful
place with considerable agriculture and mostly very narrow roads that make
driving (and parking) quite challenging. It is located only 9 miles from
France.
Phil showed me around the station on Wednesday evening and left me to test
things out and get set up. The station is housed in an old concrete building
that was used as a signal station during WWII by the Germans when they occupied
the island. The antennas consist of a single tribander which is mounted on a
short tower on top of the building, putting the overall height above ground at
about 35 feet, a trap dipole for 40/80 mounted a couple of feet below the
tribander and whose ends were only about 15 feet above ground, and a dipole for
160 at the same height. There was also an R8 vertical mounted on the roof.
This sounds like a pretty mediocre setup for contesting but the station
building is in the clear and it is located less than a kilometer from the
ocean. I found out later that it performed better than you would expect, at
least on some bands.
A couple of the antennas were in pretty poor condition and I discovered to my
chagrin that all of but the 160 dipole were cut for the phone portion of the
bands. It was going to be a challenge to get the antennas ready. Phil
provided me with some tools and with the most crucial implement â?? some heavy
duty gardening shears to cut down the beautiful but thorny gorse so that I
could get access to the end of the 160 antenna which had fallen over. This was
a tough job but after a couple of hours I had a nice path through the gorse and
managed to get the 160 antenna support back up. I taped a couple of 3â?? long
wires to the end of the trap dipole and managed to get the SWR down pretty
nicely on 80, but the SWR on 40 was still too high to use in the lower portion
on the band.
On Friday Phil had the day off of work and spent several hours helping me. We
managed to raise one end of the trap dipole to around 40 feet. Getting it away
from the building helped the SWR to the point where it became usable in the CW
band. That was a relief. We also increased the height of one end of the 160
dipole by 15 feet or so. Phil taped a couple of wires on the 15 meter driven
element of the tribander to bring the resonant frequency down, and the SWR
improved. The SWR on 10 was simply too high to fix but the vertical loaded
well and I thought it would be good enough. I found out later that I couldn't
use the amp there. Things were getting better and by dinner time Friday the
station was as ready as it was going to get. I went back to my hotel to shower
and try to get some sleep before the contest start, but although I spent about
two hours in bed, I didnâ??t sleep much.
One of the tough choices the contesters in the UK, Jersey, Guernsey, Scotland,
Wales, Northern Ireland and the other territories have to make is what power
category to enter. With a maximum power limit of 400 watts for HF, entering as
a high power station means that these stations will be competing against some
stations running over three times their power, so I suppose there is a strong
incentive to enter the low power category where at least they are on an equal
footing with everyone else. I probably should have done that too, but I
thought that with my mediocre antennas the extra power would make a big
difference in terms of running North America so I decided to go with high
power.
My plan was to focus on the low bands to log as many of those high point QSOs
as I could, but the rate on 40 started out rather poor and I became somewhat
discouraged. My first hour totaled only 53 Qâ??s. Things picked up with 83 in
the second hour and stayed at fair levels until sunrise, alternating between 40
and 80 meters, but somehow I had the impression that I wasnâ??t doing very
well. Looking at my logs now, I see that I didnâ??t do so badly that first
night. After five hours, I had 443 stations in the log, including about 60 six
pointers on 80 and 40.
I wasnâ??t sure when I should take my off times. One of my problems was that
there was no place to sleep at the shack and I had to drive 15 minutes to my
hotel in order to rest. Another problem was that there was a lot of holiday
traffic and construction on the main road to the hotel, making the trip more
like 30 minutes each way during the day. I tried sleeping in the rental car
but that didnâ??t work so well. I ended up operating for most of the first 26
hours of the contest and took an 8 hour break at 0200 zulu. In retrospect,
this was probably the worst time to take off because it cost me at least 4 good
hours of low band operating, but I was so tired at that point that I couldnâ??t
really think straight. On the other hand, a 6 hour sleep, a shower and a good
breakfast was just what the doctor ordered, and I got back to the station at 11
AM feeling very good and had no trouble at all finishing out the remaining 14
hours of the contest.
The biggest surprise I had during the weekend was just how difficult it was for
many ops to copy my callsign. I still do not know why MJ was so hard for so
many to understand, but over half of the stations that I would call needed at
least one repeat, and some needed 5-6 repeats at 15 wpm. Even then a couple of
stations could not accept the fact that I was not sending either MW or M1. This
was a good reason not to do much S&P, so I mostly ran. I hope figured that the
stations answering my CQs would listen as long as needed in order to copy my
call. Hereâ??s how various groups fared in getting my call when I called them.
My fellow G stations had no trouble at all. Most of the big multiops, whether
European or North American, got it on the first go. In fact, most American ops
in general had little trouble, although the stations I was working were by and
large the top tier of operators. Ditto with the Russians. It was the second
tier European stations who seemed to have the greatest trouble. As the contest
wore on, however, it got a little easier to S&P, especially with the stations
that I had already worked on another band. I wonder how many stations I worked
during the contest got my call wrong in their logs.
As many have noted, 20 meter conditions this years were not very good, at least
for long-haul communications. The night before the contest, I worked quite a
few strong JA stations at around 2100 Z on 20 meters, but I didnâ??t hear a
single JA during the contest. Almost no Asia at all, for that matter. The
band just never seemed to completely open up to the US. Guys like NQ4I, AA3B
and KD4D were copyable throughout the daylight hours, and even strong toward
evening, but the band just never came alive to NA. I worked very few stations
west of the Mississippi or even in 8- and 9-land for that matter.
In addition to taking an off time when I should have been working on 40 and 80,
I regret not spending more time on 160. Although I didnâ??t have an amp, the
antenna was the right length and I should have had a couple of hundred European
contacts there. Every time I listened to the band with the dipole, the stations
were covered up with an S9 noise so I thought conditions were just not very
good, but one time I accidentally listened on a different antenna and the noise
disappeared and there were stations everywhere.
Overall this was an excellent adventure. As usual, some things went poorly but
many others went well, and I am pretty satisfied with my effort. Thanks to
everyone who struggled with my call and thanks again to Phil GJ4CBQ for all of
his backup and support.
And congratulations to TC4X, S53MM and M9X (operated by G4MKP) for their
excellent TS scores.
QSLâ??s direct to W1NN with SASE please.
73,
Hal W1NN
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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