CQ WW RTTY WPX Contest
Call: KM1W
Operator(s): W1UE
Station: K1LZ
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: EMA
Operating Time (hrs): 27
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
80: 299
40: 519
20: 635
15: 790
10: 37
------------
Total: 2280 Prefixes = 809 Total Score = 5,880,000
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
First off, I'll send congrats to AA3B and K4GMH, who both probably beat me. If
I'm right, the contest was probably lost Friday night. Everything worked for
the first 10 minutes, then the R1 audio stopped decoding. I monkeyed with it
for an hour. It would work, then it would stop working. Of course, previous
operation with this station it worked FB the whole time. Then, R2 stopped
FSKing. Send a message, and all you got was one tone. After a little over an
hour of trying to make contacts and figure out what was going on, I decided
that without SO2R I wasn't going to be competitive, so I took some off time to
fix the problems. A new Y audio cable replaced the old one, and somehow, by
plugging and unplugging the FSK plug into the radio, the FSK started to work
again on R2. I thought, great, and started doing the SO2R thing. It lasted
less than 10 minutes, then stopped again. I had already used 1.5 hours of off
time during the all important low band openings to Europe Friday night, so
instead of using more off time I decided to run SO1R and fix the R2 FSK during
my first big off time at 0700Z. In my pre-contest planning, I had figured the
first 6 hours of the contest would have a rate over 100/Hr using SO2R; instead,
I went into my first planned off time with only 385 Qs. Ouch! The best thing I
can say is that I did find the FSK problem- it was either in the plug or the
ACC1 jack on the Icom. If you bent the plug a certain way, it worked; if you
just laid it there, it might or might not work. Murphy was certainly a party
to this!
Saturday morning, everything clicked. 20M opened at the right time, but doing
SO2R I decided to wait until 15M also opened; it was runnable shortly before
1200Z. For the next 4 hours, rate was 169,142,139, and 115! And, they were
all Europeans! I finished the first day with 1371 Qs, 4459 pts, and 601
Mults for a score of 2.7M. I was pleased, particularly after that bad start.
Rates were slower the 2nd night, as many SO take off time. Having to take 18
hours off is a chore, but it does make decisions as to when to take it more
important. Propagation also didn't seem to be as good. I did have 2 more
hours with rates over 100 (115, 106).
Oh, I forgot to mention a little snowstorm that was happening outside the
walls. We really did have 30" of snow Friday night into Saturday, and I sat
there in the shack on a little knoll and watching it snow and blow! I never
lost power in the storm (not like 400,000 fellow Massachusetts residents), and,
except for turning off all the rotors so I wasn't tempted to turn them, and a
few "arc faults" on the amps as the antennas blew around, the station survived
the snow and hurricane rated winds in good shape. Snow static Friday night was
S9+20 db off and on, and it made copy very difficult. It was interesting to see
the effect of the snow static on the X-Y MMTTY score. 2Tone handled it much
better than MMTTY, but neither program could handle the tick-tick-tick of the
snow static when it was S9+20.
Many thanks to Krassy K1LZ for the use of fine station. Thanks to everyone for
the Qs.
Dennis W1UE
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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