CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: N1EU
Operator(s): N1EU
Station: N1EU
Class: SOAB(A) HP
QTH: Albany NY
Operating Time (hrs): 27.9
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 37 13 34
80: 96 18 65
40: 263 29 108
20: 407 38 131
15: 666 32 129
10: 716 31 129
------------------------------
Total: 2185 161 596 Total Score = 4,783,483
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
I went into the contest hoping to do some experimenting to try and improve
pileup readability, which has frustrated me a bit in the past with the K3.
Iâ??ve recently done some modifications to a 15 year old Omni 6+ and I ended up
using it for most of the contest. The bottom line is that I donâ??t notice a
night and day difference between the K3, Omni 6+ and my Orion. If I had to
guess, Iâ??d say the Orion is slightly better than the K3 and the Omni 6+ is
slightly better than the Orion but I wouldnâ??t swear to it. I did notice that
with AGC turned off, the Omni 6+ is definitely more responsive to changes in RF
Gain than the K3/Orion. But far beyond the slight pileup readability
improvements, I was amazed at how quiet the Omni 6+ receiver can be. Weak
signals sounded â??pureâ??, as they popped above a quiet background â?" a real
pleasure to listen to. It also seemed like the really weak signals were
slightly more readable. With 600hz IR roofing filter in place, the Omni 6+
seems to give up nothing in close-in IMD immunity compared to the K3 and Orion.
However, the K3 and Orion have arguably a much more substantial control
foundation for contesting and I must admit to being somewhat of a
subreceiver/diversity addict. Iâ??ll continue to experiment in the future with
these three radios.
I ended the contest satisfied with my productivity for the amount of time in
the chair (tad under 28 hours). Inspired by K1LIâ??s post, I did a little
analysis of my own. I spent 30% of the time running with an average 149 run
rate that yielded 57% of my qsoâ??s. I would have spent more time running if
my main 40M antenna hadnâ??t bit the dust Friday night. I was left with just a
single dipole oriented NW/SE, at right angles to Europe. On a positive note,
the new-to-me 3-element SteppIR up 60ft continues to impress.
Although I greatly appreciated all the spots from the RBN (skimmer/reverse
beacon network), I still feel a great improvement would be more screening
(â??CQâ?? and callsign database validation) by the skimmer servers. I noticed
myself and others spotted numerous times when calling dx. And there sure
wouldnâ??t be a downside to eliminating all the LW3LPL and â??EKâ?? spots.
Losing potential spots of dx not in the database would be a small price to pay
for really cleaning up the RBN contest spots. And those â??lostâ?? spots can
always be entered the old fashioned way by human ops. I got a laugh at one
point when I glanced up at my cluster client screen â?" have a look at
http://n1eu.com/skimmer_spots.gif - the irony of W3LPL spotting itself as
LW3LPL and W4LPL.
Thanks for all the q's and apologies to those who I couldn't pull out.
73,
Barry N1EU
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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