IARU HF World Championship
Call: KA1ARB
Operator(s): KA1ARB, WB1ADR
Station: KA1ARB
Class: M/S HP
QTH: NC
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Zones HQ Mults
-------------------------------------
160: 11 4 2
80: 73 12 11 18
40: 132 202 22 22
20: 424 523 34 44
15: 88 48 19 18
10: 4 2 2
-------------------------------------
Total: 732 785 92 106 Total Score = 935,946
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
This one felt tough for the first several hours, conditions were terrible at the
start. Equipment problems left us without our tribander for a while and without
a rotator until late afternoon. But, I donâ??t think it would have helped much!
Our score is down a bit from last year, with 200+ fewer Qâ??s and 2 fewer
mults. But, we picked off 13 more HQ stations, ending up with a score down
only a few percent.
It wasnâ??t until the end of the afternoon that 20 meters started to really
open up for us. We did get manage to work a few EU and Russia on 15, but if
there was an opening on 10 we missed it. Twenty was the happy band, staying
open to somewhere for almost the entire contest. We got so excited that 20 was
finally alive that we forgot about 40 until the EU sunrise. Considering that,
we did well on 40, and our biggest improvement from last year was on 80m. We
even got a brief 80m run going during late EU sunrise.
Lee, WB1ADR, is the CW stud at â??Team KA1ARBâ?? and he earned his keep this
weekend with some terrific runs. He plowed through the tough condx and
equipment breakdowns. K4QPL shared some nice words about KA1ARB, but he was
really talking about Lee, WB1ADR. Once 20m opened up Lee really started to
run, with a peak rate (on SSB) over 300. Rob, KA1ARB, came close with some
nice runs as well on SSB, and he was the mult digger on the low bands.
Strategy wise, we blew it by moving to 40 meters (and 80/160) far too late.
Then, when things got slow, we tried to get something going on 20 meters too
early on Sunday morning. With only a tribander, we could have had much better
success continuing to try to run on 40 and S&P on 40/80 much later into the
morning. 20 did finally open up in the last hour of the contest, but by then
it was too late.
My CW skills are progressing, where I can run fairly solidly at 20-22 WPM. I
found, however, that I attracted much more attention when I was CQâ??ing at 28
WPM. So in the final couple of hours, when Lee was sleeping and I was getting
desperate for rate, I plunged and plundered into high-speed telegraphy (for me)
and did my best. It wasnâ??t pretty, especially with my sleep deprivation. But
it did increase our score.
I used this contest to spur on the repairs to my station after a disasterous
Fall of 2010, and I got almost everything working (only two wires up for 40m
beam). Unfortunately, I got it all done 8 hours after the contest started! A
morning tower climb fixed an intermittent coax pigtail to the tribander, and
hours of head scratching finally found a contaminated wire along the rotator
control line. Once all that was done, re-hanging the 80m wire vertical went
rather quickly. Ouch!
73,
Rob, KA1ARB
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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