CQ WW RTTY WPX Contest
Call: P49X
Operator(s): W0YK
Station: P40L/P49Y
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: FK52AL
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
80: 272
40: 826
20: 694
15: 1070
10: 1029
------------
Total: 3891 Prefixes = 974 Total Score = 14,510,652
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
2015 CQ WW RTTY �" P49X
15 February 2015
Ed Muns, W0YK
This year’s contest was very similar to 2014. I suspect others will report
some significant differences, depending on their location, but here in Aruba
the two years were amazingly identical. One reflection of this is my raw
score, which is just 0.14% lower than last year.
Friday night started out pretty good with my Qs, mults and score tracking ahead
of last year, hour by hour. Last year was my personal best so this was a good
omen. Saturday saw a small erosion of the lead but in the late evening, the
low bands just weren’t performing, substantially worse than 2014. By Sunday
morning the lead was very small and as the day wore on, it slimmed up even
more. I operated another 30 minutes past my 30 hours and crossed over last
year’s score after only 3 more minutes of operating! This is when one
reflects on the long list of things during the contest that could have been
done differently. Overall, I’m happy with the results and had a great time,
thanks to all the other stations that were operated this weekend.
2014-2015 Results
2014 2015
80 403 272
40 780 826
20 321 694
15 1235 1070
10 1208 1029
Total 3947 3891
Points 15,344 14,898
Mults 947 974
Score 14.55M 14.51M
Though the conditions seemed very similar, these band results show that the
activity shifted lower in frequency this year. Basically, I follow the rate
and work the two most productive bands for points. There is also a trade-off
to be on all bands enough to maximize exposure to the prefix mults.
Conditions
The similarity between the two years centered around generally good conditions
on all band but nothing spectacular about any. There was also this eerie
feeling that conditions were slightly unstable, with signal strengths very
strong followed by near disappearance 30 minutes later, only to come back
strong again afterward. It reminded me of following 6 meters and hoping to
catch the “big opening”. Conditions generally deteriorated throughout the
weekend, probably accentuated by the accompanying decrease in activity.
Off-Time Strategy
My basic strategy is to take a break when the rate drops, but with unstable
conditions, it is tricky to determine when that point is. The first break is
early Saturday morning, typically after EU sunrise when the low band rate
plummets. Since those QSOs generate twice the points as the daytime high-band
QSOs, I usually target the break when I think I could achieve twice the QSO
rate the next day on 10-20 meters. I plan my second break at the transition
from the high to low bands Saturday evening. I’m looking for hourly point
rate, and new prefixes. I don’t care where they come from. The targeted
third break is early Sunday morning when the low band rate drops, which is
usually 1-2 hours earlier that the first morning.
I start Saturday and Sunday mornings when there are two bands solidly open that
I can run on. Rather than start on 20 and have to switch to 10 shortly
thereafter, I just wait until 10 is open to Europe solidly, and this is
typically around 12z. By Sunday morning, I am down to 6-10 hours remaining and
have the option to take another break or two when rate drops off. This is a
dicey decision, though, because with these quirky conditions, it is easy to
miss a spectacular opening late Sunday, or alternatively have to endure dismal
conditions instead. Like last year, I took a fourth break Sunday when rate
dropped off, hoping it would be better later in the day.
After a 2-hour nap, got on for the last 3 hours and was greeted with even more
instability in solar conditions. Signals would fade out within the QSO and a
couple of them had to just be scratched. Five minutes later, signals would be
crashing in at S9+20dB, then gone again. At the same time, some far-away
places like JA and YB seemed to have spotlight propagation with echoey, but
solid, signal quality. But, my last 30 minutes of official score time was
excruciatingly slow. By then, there was too little score time left to make
another break feasible.
Part way through this last operating session, I had to give up on 10 meters.
It might have come back, but the down periods were just too slim. After moving
to 20, I then watched 15 succumb to the same decline and moved to 40 in the last
half hour. There were good signals on 40, but not enough new stations to work
and it was hardly better than the 15 meter band I had just left. Meanwhile, 20
oscillated between tremendous highs with big pileups to frustrating lows with
several unanswered CQs.
Operating
On the plus side, I really appreciate all those who moved through the bands
with me, many on all 5 bands. One station called me, literally, on my other
band one second after I acknowledged our current QSO. Especially gratifying
was the marked increase in tailending skill. Its really fun when a station
drops their call in, once, just as the station I’m working finishes their
exchange. I can pick them up without the time spent in a CQ cycle.
On the not-so-plus side, the excessive bandwidth of most (yes, most) RTTY
signals is becoming a bigger problem with each contest. Two things are
changing. First, there are increasingly more signals squeezing in a fixed
sub-band. Second, the enlightened few have narrowed their transmit bandwidth
and are dubiously “rewarded” with the wider signals able to move in closer
to them, creating even more debilitating key clicks in their passband. This is
a community problem and the fix will be hard, I’m afraid. What’s needed is
for everyone to take steps to ensure their transmit bandwidth is the minimum
needed for reliable communication.
There was the usual, and significant, amount of sent exchanges where zeros were
sent for the serial number or else something like {his call} {his exchange}.
Less than one out of ten caught this and resent the exchange correctly. Fully
90% had to be queried to please send a valid exchange. Are some folks not
looking at what they are sending? Does the excruciatingly long transmission
not alert them to the problem? I think this stems from something in the logger
they are using, but it sure seems avoidable.
Finally, the integrity of spots was fairly low. So much so that I stopped
wasting time looking at seemingly new mults on my bandmaps. Again, I suspect a
configuration problem where the logger is setup to automatically spot each
station logged. This might be fine when you’re tuning around working CQing
stations who are fixed on a frequency. All too often, I’d go to a new mult
on my bandmap and find a different CQing station. A bit later I’d
investigate another new mult and find the same CQing station. A simple
operator mistake, but one that affects everyone in the contest using Packet.
In this contest, that is a lot of inconvenienced people!
Decoding
As I’ve observed previously, the value of multiple decoders was once again
shown to be extremely high. I run 6 different decoders, four on my main
receiver and two on my second receiver in each radio. But, much of the time I
have both receivers on the same frequency, so in effect I have all six decoders
on my run frequency. There are many times when I get clear copy in only one of
the six! That’s not very good odds for those who bet on only one decoder.
Maybe my pile-up conditions are not typical, but the lesson learned can be
applied to any station.
For some reason my main MMTTY decoders bungled the serial number on a high
proportion of QSOs. 2Tone almost always copied perfectly. I’m not sure a
generalization can come from this, but having both was important. 2Tone, on
the other hand, has a much longer delay in printing received text, and is
accordingly unusable as a main decoder. It is relegated to back-up copy when
the main MMTTY decoder isn’t getting clear copy. And for whatever reason, a
few times, a decoder on the sub-receiver copied clearly when the other 5 did
not. All of this results in hardly any need for repeats in the harshest of QRM
and band conditions.
Station
Rigs: Elecraft K3s (2), Alpha 86s (2), FilterMax low-power bandpass filters,
4O3A high-power bandpass filters
3 networked PCs with WriteLog 11.24j, VE7CC CC User, DSL Internet, MMTTY (4),
2Tone (6), DXP38 (2), homebrew FSK/PTT Serial cables (4), Bose headphones,
computer spectacles
Tower 1: 2 element 40 meter at 76 feet, 4 element 20 meter at 68 feet, 1
element 80 meter Sigma 80 at 64 feet, 160 meter “double L” vertical at 67
feet (top)
Tower 2: 2 element 10 meter at 55 feet; 5 elements 15 meter at 55 feet
Tower 3: C31XR at 43 feet
Four 500 foot beverages using K9AY switching box/preamp
Thanks to station owners John P40L/W6LD and Andy P49Y/AE6Y!
73,
Ed W0YK
Cabrillo Statistics (Version 10g) by K5KA & N6TV
http://bit.ly/cabstat
CALLSIGN: P49X
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: ONE
CONTEST: CQ-WPX-RTTY
OPERATORS: W0YK
-------------- Q S O R a t e S u m m a r y ---------------------
Hour 160 80 40 20 15 10 Rate Total Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------
0000 0 0 47 109 0 0 156 156 4.0
0100 0 0 73 92 0 0 165 321 8.2
0200 0 0 74 93 0 0 167 488 12.5
0300 0 37 84 22 0 0 143 631 16.2
0400 0 48 87 0 0 0 135 766 19.7
0500 0 29 70 0 0 0 99 865 22.2
0600 0 52 55 0 0 0 107 972 25.0
0700 0 21 27 0 0 0 48 1020 26.2
0800 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1020 26.2
0900 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1020 26.2
1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1020 26.2
1100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1020 26.2
1200 0 0 0 0 86 89 175 1195 30.7
1300 0 0 0 0 88 98 186 1381 35.5
1400 0 0 0 0 78 90 168 1549 39.8
1500 0 0 0 0 79 74 153 1702 43.7
1600 0 0 0 0 77 96 173 1875 48.2
1700 0 0 0 0 69 88 157 2032 52.2
1800 0 0 0 0 84 74 158 2190 56.3
1900 0 0 0 0 76 54 130 2320 59.6
2000 0 0 0 81 57 0 138 2458 63.2
2100 0 0 0 35 15 0 50 2508 64.5
2200 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2508 64.5
2300 0 0 11 23 0 0 34 2542 65.3
0000 0 0 36 53 0 0 89 2631 67.6
0100 0 2 33 9 0 0 44 2675 68.7
0200 0 14 59 0 0 0 73 2748 70.6
0300 0 25 60 0 0 0 85 2833 72.8
0400 0 21 57 0 0 0 78 2911 74.8
0500 0 23 40 0 0 0 63 2974 76.4
0600 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2974 76.4
0700 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2974 76.4
0800 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2974 76.4
0900 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2974 76.4
1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2974 76.4
1100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2974 76.4
1200 0 0 0 0 47 66 113 3087 79.3
1300 0 0 0 0 55 74 129 3216 82.7
1400 0 0 0 0 46 75 121 3337 85.8
1500 0 0 0 0 46 73 119 3456 88.8
1600 0 0 0 0 3 15 18 3474 89.3
1700 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3474 89.3
1800 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3474 89.3
1900 0 0 0 0 71 61 132 3606 92.7
2000 0 0 0 88 75 2 165 3771 96.9
2100 0 0 13 89 18 0 120 3891 100.0
2200 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3891 100.0
2300 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3891 100.0
------------------------------------------------------
Total 0 272 826 694 1070 1029 3891
Gross QSOs=3940 Dupes=49 Net QSOs=3891
Unique callsigns worked = 2509
The best 60 minute rate was 203/hour from 1211 to 1310
The best 30 minute rate was 214/hour from 1227 to 1256
The best 10 minute rate was 240/hour from 1249 to 1258
The best 1 minute rates were:
6 QSOs/minute 2 times.
5 QSOs/minute 38 times.
4 QSOs/minute 218 times.
3 QSOs/minute 414 times.
2 QSOs/minute 584 times.
1 QSOs/minute 407 times.
There were 2380 bandchanges and 1579 (40.6%) probable 2nd radio QSOs.
Number of letters in callsigns
Letters # worked
-----------------
3 3
4 1131
5 1635
6 1094
7 14
8 11
9 2
10 1
Multi-band QSOs
---------------
1 bands 1626
2 bands 539
3 bands 226
4 bands 81
5 bands 37
6 bands 0
------- S i n g l e B a n d Q S O s ------
Band 160 80 40 20 15 10
----------------------------------------------
QSOs 0 76 329 279 469 473
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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