ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: DL1IAO
Operator(s): DL1IAO
Station: DF0UK
Class: SO CW Unlimited HP
QTH: JN49EA
Operating Time (hrs): 25.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW: 1422 161
SSB:
-------------------
Total: 1422 161 Total Score = 915,768
Club: Bavarian Contest Club
Comments:
IC756Pro3(INRAD) + Alpha89
BX120 Interface, Idiom Press CMOS4
WT v4.13.0 on Mac mini MD387D/A running Windows 7
CC User for packet & skimmer
Optibeam OB16-3 @ abt 40m total height
(on a university building with 17m crank-up tower on roof)
DXCC: 107
States & Prov: 54
With 10m in such a good shape I really wanted to operate, even with the DL0WW
clubstation in use by Roland DK3GI. This involved my usual 3h car ride back
from Bayreuth/Bavaria on Friday evening, picking up the station key from DK9IP
and carrying my equipment (incl. the Alpha) up to the 5th floor in the
university building.
Station setup was completed late at around 23:30, so I decided to operate the
first hour which only produced 13 QSOs. I spent the rest of the night in my
little camper and worked RM9I at 05:42 while having some breakfast. At 06:32 I
ran across DL1VJ with a huge backscatter signal. It must have been 20 years
since I worked Bernd with his DL call so that was a nice surprise. As he was
operating from the DR1A M/M station I thought it would be interesting to see
how I could keep up with a tribander in a city QTH. It was nice to know that
Bernd was unassisted, of course.
The band really opened at 06:38 with a loud BA7IO. The 08:00 hour produced the
best QSO rate (99) of the weekend but only few JA's called in. The first
caribbeans were logged at 11:00 and W1WMU at 11:34. W/VE's seemed loud enough
to run at a good rate but it never really happened for me. Although I was able
to work a few W6/7's most callers were right in the noise at this QTH.
Unfortunately QRM peaked S5-6 coming from a high building exactly in the way to
NA and I felt extremely deaf. As a result the afternoon hours were a big
disappointment and allowed DL1VJ to open a gap of 300 QSOs at the end of the
day (700 vs 1000 QSOs). While the band closed completely for me at ~17:30,
DL1VJ in the northwest still seemed to have some propagation for a while. My YL
liked the idea of going out for lunch together, so I shut down the station and
drove 65km to Mannheim to meet the YL.
After a refreshing 5 hours of sleep I drove back the same way to Karlsruhe and
made the first scatter QSOs at 06:00. The band opened in a similar fashion with
BA7QT getting through at 06:26, but this morning I had a more productive run to
JA. Between 10:30 and 11:15 I was pleased to even work a few JA's and ZL's over
longpath. VE1OP was the first NA at 11:24 and signals sounded much better
compared to Saturday. As a result I was able to run more successfully but still
feeling deaf in the loud local noise floor from the NW. I watched DK3GI and
DL5AXX gaining ground, so I had to work hard to maintain the overall rate by
clicking the bandmap whenever the run rate dropped. A few W7's (mostly AZ) had
very nice signals, but at the end I was still missing MT, OR, WA, WY and ND.
The band closed even earlier at ~17:00, but recovered a bit later - enough to
work 40 more stations until I finally went QRT at 19:05. The QSO gap between
DL1VJ and me remained almost constant throughout Sunday.
I did some postcontest analysis using the RBN Spots Analysis Tool and found
that my signals were inferior most of the time when compared to DL1VJ, DL5AXX
and DK3GI. I especially like (or hate?) DL1VJ vs DL1IAO @NN3RP on Sunday.
I had a lot of fun!
A big thank you goes to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) radio club
for another opportunity to use their fine station. I hope it is possible to
track down and fix the QRM source coming from the NW.
73 & Merry XMAS!
Stefan
DL1IAO@contesting.com
http://www.dl1iao.com
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
______________________________________________
3830 mailing list
3830@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/3830
|