ARRL DX Contest, CW
Call: WX0B
Operator(s): AD5Q
Station: WX0B
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Dallas
Operating Time (hrs): 43:37
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 35 23
80: 176 62
40: 745 91
20: 1183 97
15: 229 70
10: 30 16
-------------------
Total: 2398 359 Total Score = 2,526,642
Club: DFW Contest Group
Comments:
We have a couple more years to go with this sunspot bottom, and for beyond there
is talk of a maunder minimum lasting several solar cycles. Many of us may never
see another good 10m run in our lifetimes, and I have just turned 70. Strategy
adjusts to make the most of this, but there can also be disturbed conditions and
rain. I was mostly concerned about the rain because the other factors effect
everyone more equally. It wasn't so bad - short periods on Saturday morning and
Sunday afternoon wiped out the bands but they came right back - not like the
2015 CQWW which still has me traumatized.
I finished the first night ahead of last year's pace, and went into the morning
runs determined NOT to spend too little or too much time on 15. I ran on 15 for
only an hour, then back to 20 which was fine. Finished day one substantially
behind last year, especially in mults. I worked on that the 2nd day.
On Saturday night there were times when I couldn't find anything productive to
do and I lost focus, but then I finally found an EU run on 80. It was a rough
night, and difficult copy on runs makes it much harder to use the 2nd radio.
There were no equipment failures, but the SWR went high on the 80m wire vertical
which covers parts of the world where the main antenna has deep nulls (Asia). So
no 80m JA runs and I missed some easy mults that couldn't tell I was calling. If
there was a good EU window on 160m it happened the first night and I missed it.
On Sunday morning 15m was not runnable when it should have been peaking -
nothing heard beyond Spain and I didn't go there until later when at least the
west coast of EU was calling.
I need to change logging software again because WinTest crashed about 40 times
during runs this time, getting worse in every contest. If the problem were in my
scripting I would be able to fix it, but I think this is due to the sheer amount
of LUA processing I do (likely more than anyone else who uses WinTest). Nearly
every keystroke executes a script. Since LUA is an interpretive language it must
manage string space, and I think that's what's locking up. If I'm the only one
having this problem it means it won't be fixed. There is a new program I am
looking at, by 9A5K. I noticed it from one of my Cabrillo analysis reports
because it's used by several of the top single ops who are doing a lot of
interleaved dueling. It uses a different scripting language (C sharp) which is
compiled, and I will need to rewrite all my automation functionality and don't
really have the time. Also, I would likely crash and burn in a couple contests
before all the bugs are out. But I'm going there - somehow. It has a feature I
need.
/* end of rant */
Roy -- AD5Q
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