CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: NR4M
Operator(s): YO3JR W7IY KO8SCA K4GMH N3UA N3AIU KN3DEB N2YO KG3V KA4RRU K4GM
CE2MVF K7SV NR4M
Station: NR4M
Class: M/M HP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 96
80: 618
40: 1485
20: 1891
15: 560
10: 216
------------
Total: 4866 Prefixes = 1278 Total Score = 16,602,498
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
As sometime happens with CQWW WPX CW following Hamvention, there was some
international flair to the NR4M operation this year. We had Mattieu CE3MVW and
Andy YO3JR join us. Add to that KO8SCA, K4GMH, N3UA, CE2MVF, N3AIU, KN3DEB,
N2YO, KG3V, KA4RRU, K4GM, W7IY, CE2K7SV and NR4M to round out the list of great
ops.
We had an interesting experience with operators. Arnie (Gunner) met Steve about
a year ago at a local Mexican restaurant. As they chatted Steve mentioned ham
radio and Arnie said he was a CW op in the Marine Corps. Well maybe a month ago
Arnie received his tech ticket and the call KN4DEB (yeah he’s getting some
grief about the call!). Arnie showed up at the Goat Farm Saturday afternoon and
Steve sat down to get him acquainted with CW contesting. About fifteen minutes
later Steve got up and said Arnie was running 'em at 30WPM! Arnie also spent
Sunday afternoon under the watchful eye of NR4M on 15, doing a great job. At
one point near the end of the contest, when ops tend to get scarce, Arnie was
seen (and photographed) wearing TWO sets of phones. One was for the 15 meter
run station and the other was for the 15 mult station. After the contest, he
was asked about this and what prompted him to do that. He stated something to
the effect that 'It seemed like the logical thing to do'. I think he has a
future in contesting... Part of the point of this is the fact that there are a
number of Veterans out there who were CW ops and many of them would probably
have the time of their lives doing CW contesting if they knew about it!
Bands started out quite good with decent runs on 40 and 20 and a fair number of
Qs on 15 meters the first night. On 80 it was quite apparent that the smaller
European stations were not hearing well as it was impossible to get any runs
going. Saturday 20 and 15 were fair, but the solar event started showing it’s
effects that evening. Early in the evening it appeared that Eur was hearing
better on 80 but for us the bands was noisier than Friday night. Sunday began
as a slog but slowly improved. Fairly decent short skip made an appearance on
10 which produced a good number of single pointers. Three southern Europeans
station were worked on 10 towards the end of the contest. Our score was fairly
reduced from last year.
Everyone had a great time. As usual food was great and sleeping accommodations
very comfortable (who needs sleep anyway?). Everything held up well with no
equipment failures. It doesn’t appear that we experienced any frequency
fights and operations were in general very pleasant. With the bands being what
they were, there was quite a bit of time for conversation which was enjoyed by
all. As usual it was nice listening to ops at other stations with whom we
visited at Hamvention.
As is generally the case with WPX, the Memorial Day Holiday made it a bit more
difficult to line up operators, but the addition of Mathias, CE2MVF, Adrian,
KO8SCA, and Andy, YO3JR, really helped. We have an even worse problem with
lining up ops for CQWW CW during the US Thanksgiving weekend. It would be nice
if the CQ contest sponsors would give consideration to reversing the weekends
of the CQWW CW and CQWW SSB contests as well as the CQWW WPX CW and CQWW WPX
SSB each year!
Thanks for the Q's.
Many thanks to Steve and Carolyn for supporting our habit once again!
de Lar, K7SV and the 'Goat Farm gang'
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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