CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: W8AV
Operator(s): W8AV AF8A K8AJS W8KIC K0XV
Station: W8AV
Class: M/M HP
QTH: Ohio
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 75 14 37
80: 248 23 82
40: 532 33 112
20: 946 34 123
15: 265 23 75
10: 85 15 34
------------------------------
Total: 2151 142 463 Total Score = 3,451,525
Club: Mad River Radio Club
Comments:
Well another CQWW CW is in the books. It was fun despite the poor conditions.
We welcomed Jim, K0XV to our merry little band and really had fun operating
with him despite the abysmally poor conditions (T-shirt and secret decoder ring
to follow, sometime, Jim). We missed having Doug, K4LT this year and look
forward to having him return next year.
Did I mention band conditions? Propagation was horrible. It was hard to get
many stations to hear us and had to call many times in S&P mode. This was
exacerbated by a number of what K8MFO calls "pac-man operators" that
keep calling over the DX. We expected the low bands to be better with the
sunspot cycle declining but this was not the case in the contest with the A
index in the 30's for most of the weekend.
There were a lot of improvements and repairs made to the W8AV station this
year. These included:
Replacement of 5 of the 6 TS-930's with K3's Still need one more for 10 meter
station, a future purchase
Replacement of the XP computers with newer computers running Win 7 (still
skeptical about Win 10)
Replacement of monitors with larger ones (thanks K4LT and N8IW)
Repair of the 15 meter TIC ring to get it turning again after 2 years of
fighting with Carl at TIC General.
Repair of motor on 40 meter TIC Ring (needed a new indicator pot)
Repair of beverage antennas including repair and replacement of coax feeds
Installation of WinKeyer USB keyers at all stations (thanks to donations from
members of W8AV crew)
Switching over to N1MM+ contest software from Writelog
There were also a few problems over the weekend:
We had RFI issues effecting the USB cables for the mice, keyboards, and
WinKeyers causing them to lock up on the 10 and 15 computers. We fixed the
problem by installing longer USB extender cables (never figured that this would
work, but it did). Looks like some ferrite beads are in my future.
The 40 meter computer kept shutting down randomly with a memory parity error.
I was aware of this being a potential problem before the contest but could not
get and old XP machine to interface with the Winkeyer. After replacing the
memory in the computer before the contest did not alleviate the problem, it
appears something is amiss in the motherboard. Computer goes back for warranty
repair this week.
About halfway through the contest something caused a bind in the 15 meter ring
allowing it to only turn back and forth over a 90 degree arc. This is probably
due to worn rollers in the ring assembly which will necessitate another call to
Carl to obtain replacements.
Conditions: Did I mention horrible conditions?
All in all, though, we all had fun and that is what it is all about. huge
thanks to the W8AV operating crew!
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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