ARRL DX Contest, SSB
Call: YN5Z
Operator(s): K7ZO
Station: YN5Z
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Nicaragua
Operating Time (hrs): 36.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 1 1
80: 393 55
40: 583 56
20: 952 60
15: 1598 60
10: 2296 59
-------------------
Total: 5823 291 Total Score = 5,083,479
Club:
Comments:
After taking last year off I once again returned to my YN5Z QTH for ARRL DX
Phone. Our travel plans were more relaxed this year as well with us spending a
total of three weeks in Nicaragua. The intent being to head south for the tail
end of winter at home and have it be spring when we get back. Time will tell is
this works out.
The first few days of the trip we ventured out to the Corn Islands on
Nicaragua's Caribbean coast. This part of the trip was by design radio free
though I understand the islands are a pretty rare IOTA group. It really is a
magical place and if anyone is contemplating a radio operation from there let
me know and I can fill in some important details.
We arrived at our usual San Juan del Sur rental home fully a week and a half
before ARRL DX Phone. This gave me time to setup the station at a bit more
leisurely pace than I normally do. All the details and a link to a video tour
can be found off the YN5Z QRZ.COM page. It also let me get on the air for the
NAQP RTTY contest. I enjoy RTTY as a mode. Getting a chance to be likely the
first ever entry from YN and hand out some mults was the motivation. I ended up
putting in 7 hours or so. A full 10 hour effort would likely have earned me the
all-time DX record, but we had visitors drop by for a while in the afternoon.
One un-intended consequence of the early setup is it also gave time for more
things to go wrong. In the past I have been on the air for 5 days at best. This
time it was going to be more like 10. Remember, everything I do here is Field
Day-ish. All the antennas are temporary. I use an empty lot next to the house
for my low band verticals. The Spiderbeam is located on the pool deck. I use a
spare bedroom as an operating location.
This time of year in Nicaragua is the middle of their dry season. It is also a
very windy time of year and we had several days with steady 25mph winds with
gusts likely 40 mph plus. To give you a vision of what this looks like imagine
the waves breaking on the rocks in the bay below our house. The offshore winds
would catch wave and shred it into a mist blown back out to sea. One
particularly bad night was right after NAQP RTTY when I woke up to find the
front element of my Spiderbeam dangling in mid-air. The innermost tube had
broken from the repeated stress of the element bending in the wind. Thankfully
I have spare tubes and after a bit of MacGyver engineering to strengthen the
whole element the antenna was back up in the air. As I say, “Just another
adventure in my continuing Nicaragua Field Day”. A couple of days after this
I was walking around the house and happened to look up at the empty lot where
my I erect my verticals. What the heck, there was a backhoe-loader scraping the
ground clear. Seeing any kind of mechanized earth moving equipment in Nicaragua
is a rare sight. Now for one to be on the lot with my verticals was a shock.
Imagining the worst, I raced up to the lot and, as best I could with my limited
Spanish, asked them if it was OK that I use the land where my antennas were. I
believed we had an agreement that they would only clear off half the lot and
not touch the half with the antennas. I walked across the lot drawing an
imaginary line. Clear the lot on one side and not on the other. Yes, no problem
they said. I even moved a couple of ground radials and they said “No, you are
OK, you don't need to do that.” So, I went back into the house. Then a little
while later the caretakers of our house came to get me a bit frantically. Sure
enough the work crew had forgotten the idea of the Clear/No Clear line and the
bucket blade was scraping the ground around the antenna guy points and bases.
(I use a pile of sandbags as guy anchors.) In the process they were munching up
my ground radials. I frantically pulled them out of the way. Several were
already in the pile of dirt in the loader bucket by the time I grabbed them. So
when it was all over I had a several radials that were much shorter than they
started the day and a couple of giant birds nests of tangled masses of wires
where I had saved the rest. But, the antennas were still standing. To be fair,
there is no reason to expect the work crew would understand the radial wires.
After an hour of work I had the radial mess untangled and spread back out
across the lot. (And actually if they had just cleared the lot a week earlier
it would have been wonderful.) The whole situation could have been worse. Just
another adventure in my continuing Nicaragua Field Day.
One other consequence of the high winds is that turning the Spiderbeam is a
sketchy proposition. If the winds are howling there is no safe way to turn the
beam. I need to keep it locked in place. Loosening the pull ropes on the cross
boom elements is not something you want to do. Plus, turning the antenna into
the wind is just not going to happen. I could likely turn it with the wind.
But, that might be a one time event and then I would be stuck at the heading
for the duration of the contest. Luckily from down here you don't really need
to turn an antenna in ARRL DX. (CQWW is another matter). A single heading will
work pretty well. So, that was my plan. Get the Spiderbeam on the one best
heading and lock it down there. From here that happens to be just a tad west of
due North. And so that is where it spent the whole weekend.
I really didn't know what to expect once the contest got going. I traded
messages with the TI5W crew about how their ARRL DX CW went to get some feel.
That QTH is located about 100 miles south of here. Their propagation is pretty
close to what I have. After looking over their notes and my records I
provisionally set a goal of 5 million points and 6,000 QSOs. My 2014 effort was
5.9 million points and 6,700 QSOs. I figured being another two years down the
sunspot cycle curve would have some sort of impact on my score.
I started the contest on 20 and spent the first three hours there with
reasonable, though not great, results. I got bounced off my run frequencies a
couple of times and it takes a while to reestablish a new one which impacted my
rate. But, overall I was happy. Toward the end of the period I moved VO1VXC from
20 to 40 and worked him no problem. At 0320 I made the move to 40 and
immediately ran into a brick wall. After 20 minutes of trying I could not get a
run going. I S&P'd a couple of QSOs then finally after 30 minutes managed to
settle in at 7214 and ran a bit. But, rates were pathetic. I gave up on the
frequency after 30 minutes thinking maybe that was the problem. I then spent
another 30 minutes trying to establish another run frequency with no luck. I
even had a hard time S&Ping other stations. Something was just not right. I
still am searching for an answer. Whether it as a total operator skill issue, a
propagation issue, the fact 40 was great to Europe and I was lost in the
proverbial noise, etc. I just don't know. But after 30 minutes I just gave up
and figured I would try 80. I ran into pretty much the same situation there. I
struggled for 30 more minutes before deciding I would just go to bed. In the 60
minutes up until then I made 20 QSOs �" by far the worst hour of my YN
contesting career. My plan was to do my 4 hour sleep break earlier, then get up
and on the air earlier than planned and see what happens. This is my general
strategy anyway. To get up early here after 40 and 80 have closed between the
US and Europe. Yes it is the middle of the night in US/Canada and most casual
operators are in bed. But the trade off of not having to compete with the
Europeans seems to be positive.
So, I got up and on 80M right before 10:00. And it was just like a remember
with a good solid 126 hour. With my 80 antenna being an ancient HF2V I can't
really ask for more. Around 1100 I moved to 40 and also had a good hour of 124.
The mystery of what happened the previous evening still stands. After my dawn at
1200 I took a 45 minute breakfast and coffee break. By the time I sat back down
at the radio 15 was open and I figured I would just skip my planned time on 20
and go straight there. Rates were slow as I expected as everyone's attention
was on Europe. Also the band was really only open east of the Mississippi
though a scattering of west coast stations starting showing up by 1430. At 1500
I made the switch to 10. I knew from monitoring earlier during the week that the
10 meter beacons were coming in strong by 1500. I also suspected that 10 would
not be open between the US and Europe and I would have much less competition.
And, as I have learned over the years, my Spiderbeam at this QTH is just an
awesome 10 meter antenna. I was rewarded over the next 5 hours with the best
rates of the contest and well over 1,000 QSOs in the log when I decided to move
back to 15. It was during this time on 10 I had my peak rate for the contest at
264 during the 16:00 clock hour. This compares favorably with 2014. However in
2014 I had 7 hours over 250 and 16 over 200. This year I ended up with 2 hours
over 250 and 10 hours over 200. I would like to think this is propagation
related but it also could be due to the operator also being two years further
along on his personal sunspot cycle.
The 10 meter opening on Saturday morning was a great study in propagation. I
will spend some more time looking at it when I get home. But, when I first
started the band was open only to the upper Midwest and mid east coast.
Basically W9, W8, W3 and W2. It was not until an hour later, around 16:00,
that I worked my first TX. By that time AZ and WY were already in the log. The
gulf coast states started showing up, then northern W4 (VA, NC, etc) but the
southeast W4 was still MIA. GA did not find its way into the log until 1630 and
FL until 1640. This was very reminiscent of the 2012 ARRL 10 Meter Contest.
Around 20:00 I started moving some stations from 10 to 15 to fill in worrisome
mults. After one move it seemed like the 10 meter pileup followed me in mass
to 15, signals were loud, and I just stayed there. This ended up being good
timing with the second and third best hours of the contest. I tried moving a
few stations from 15 to 20 but with poor results. 20 was so packed it was next
to impossible to accomplish a QSO on a randomly chosen frequency. One of the
failed passes was with SD �" the state which ended up being my nemesis
for the weekend. Eventually I missed SD on 20, 40, and 80. Relatively speaking,
my log is dripping with ND. Usually these roles are reversed.
At 23:30 I took an hour break for a shower and to have Saturday night dinner
with my family. This has become somewhat a tradition and I didn't want to break
it. At the halfway point I was at 3082 X 259 vs 3741 x 279 in 2014. I had
serious concerns about hitting my 5 million point and 6,000 QSO goals.
After dinner it was time to try 20. Wow was it packed! I thought “Well this
is going to be fun trying to get a run frequency” After getting chased off my
first two tries I managed to squeeze in at 14335. I knew if I could just hang in
there, make a few QSOs, and then get spotted, I should end up with a usable
frequency This is what happened and I ended up having a couple good hours until
the band started fading out around 02:30. Then is was time for the move to 40.
The question was, what was going to happen tonight? Would I just crash and burn
like the first night? Or, would I manage to find the propagation and operating
skill to make something happen? So, off I went. And, if you think establishing
a run frequency on 20 is hard, try it on 40 between 7125 and 7200 during a
major contest. I found a little gap around 7175 where the QRM was only 10 over
9 instead of 30 over 9 and CQ'd away. Relatively quickly I managed a few QSOs,
got spotted, and I was off and running. For the next two hours my little DX
Engineering ¼ wave vertical and I held fort on 7175 putting 300 QSOs in the
log. This is how I remembered it being. I was glad I pulled it off. But, it
also still deepens the mystery of what happened 24 hours earlier. Around 05:00
I moved to 80 for an hour with 130+ QSOs and then went to bed as planned at
06:00. Again, this was totally different than what happened the first night.
For whatever reason, my 4 hour sleep break stretched to 4:45 and I didn't get
on the air again until 10:45. I split the time between then and my dawn between
40 and 80. Rates were predictably low, But I added three missing 80 mults and
was moving along toward my goal. At dawn I was at 3,969 X 286. I knew I could
probably get another 4-5 mults that just “show up out of nowhere”. So, to
hit 5 million points I was going to need 1,750 QSOs or so in the last 12 hours.
At this point there is really no mult strategy per se. You just have to go find
the QSOs.
I spent the 12:00 hour on 20. This is traditionally the most challenging hour
of the contest. Right after our dawn. The bands have not sorted themselves out
yet. W/VE are looking at Europe. Etc. So my 53 hours was not unexpected. I took
a 30 minute breakfast break and then tried 15. I ran into another weekend
mystery. The band only seemed open to the Southeast US and signal levels were
really low. At one point I wondered if ARRL DX SSB had changed into the Florida
QSO party. I fought with it for 45 minutes, which in hindsight was way longer
than I should have. At 14:20 I made the move to 10. I could hear beacons
already coming in so I knew the band was open. And I needed a whole bunch of
QSOs. I was not going to get them on 15 or 20.
I was immediately rewarded with great rates. Initially the band was only open
up and down the east coast. But by 15:15 it was open coast to coast and QSOs
started filling the log. At 18:15 I tried, again unsuccessfully, to move a SD
station to 20. When I got back to my 10 run frequency I found LZ8A camped out.
OK, that's fair. I left the frequency. I run the risk of losing it. But, what
the heck. Is 10 open from LZ to the states? It was two hours after his sunset.
I heard him working stations as far west as IA. And with 100 watts. Well that
is 10 meters I guess. In reading some of the 3830 postings I see that there was
a Sunday afternoon 10 meter opening between US/VE and Europe.
I quickly reestablished another run frequency and kept filling the log. I
passed 5,000 QSOs and 2,000 on 10 around 19:30. I needed another 750 in 4 ½
hours. Certainly doable. At 20:30 I decided 10 meters was getting worked out
and I QSY'd to 15. As compared to the morning the band was in great shape with
stations calling in from coast to coast. At 21:40 VO2AC calls in for a “Out
of nowhere” mult. I move him easily to 10. On 20 though I can hear him but
apparently he could not hear me. So, that mult was missed. Around this time I
start setting up schedules on 40M at the end of the contest for VT and NS which
I was missing. 15M keeps producing though signal levels seem to be going through
wide QSB swings. For several minutes I struggle to pull calls out of the noise.
Then, everyone is pounding in. But, I figure this band holds the best chance of
getting to my 5 million point goal. And, around 23:35 I do hit my goal. At 23:50
I hit 5,800 QSOs �" a level I didn't think I had a chance to getting to
after the first day. At 23:55 I head off for my 40 meter schedules and realized
I made a rookie mistake in picking my frequency I am never on 40 at this time of
day and so choosing 7213 was just stupid. I had to slide down to 7202 before I
could avoid the BC QRM. I called CQ and was immediately pounced on by many
stations. I called out for my VT skeds and worked them. Thankfully they also
had slid down looking for me. I was not successful with the NS skeds. And,
there was overall 5 minutes of utter chaos on the frequency with stations
calling me, me trying to work my skeds, etc.
When it was all said and done my raw score is at: 5,823 x 291 = 5,083,479. I
essentially hit my pre-contest goal right on the button. So, I should be happy.
And I am. I still want to know what happened the first night on 40 and 80. That
is going to bug me forever.
Thanks everyone for the QSO and for those that QSY'd at my requests. QSL
information can be found on the YN5Z QSL page.
Scott/YN5Z/K7ZO
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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