CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: AB1J
Operator(s): AB1J
Station: AB1J
Class: SOSB20 LP
QTH: Waltham MA
Operating Time (hrs): 25
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80:
40:
20: 473
15:
10:
------------
Total: 473 Prefixes = 341 Total Score = 304,845
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
This is one of my favorite contests and I decided to go Unassisted this time
around. Like back in the olden days.
Conditions varied from average to downright poor. Saturday evening the solar
indices were: SFI=73 K=1 SSN=32 eSSN=-3
Overnight a cold front came through and I noticed the noise floor shot up about
12 dB on Sunday due to a disturbed atmosphere in the region. I like to track
various data during contests just for fun and I think I'll add in the noise
floor to my stats file. Why have OCD if you don't use it?
Things got much better both days in the late afternoons and evenings but there
was always a lot of QSB. It's surprising how just a little QSB or burst of noise
can take out a digit in a serial number. I noticed lots of repeat requests,
more than usual. I had to ask a lot and many asked me. I likely made a number
of errors even so.
I certainly don't look forward to viewing my Log Wreck Report, oops, I mean Log
Check Report.
I used two 20m single element wire antennas for A/B comparisons and was
surprised to learn this knocked me out of the TB-WIRES category. I always
considered TB-WIRES as a small station refuge from the
super-duper-mega-blaster-monster stations, but its rules are specific and quite
restrictive. Not just any small station qualifies. My operation was not
"within the rules or the spirit" of the overlay. Guess I was "one
coax over the line ..."
I was bummed about that, but the antenna experiment was fun and instructive.
One antenna is an attic dipole broadside N/S. The other is a very low outside
20m full wave broadside E/W. I consider both sub-optimal, but they're all I
have. Generally, there wasn't much difference between them, but in a few cases
it was worth switching. When running, I'd switch back and forth periodically.
In S&P I'd try both for difficult QSOs and go with the one with the best
received signal.
One thing I concluded was if the outside antenna could be as high as the peak of
my roof, it would work quite well and certainly outperform the attic antenna.
The full wave cloverleaf pattern would provide good coverage. Currently, my
attic dipole is semi-omnidirectional due the disruption of its pattern by all
the house wiring, aluminum gutters, etc. A screwed up pattern, but it leaks a
bit of RF in almost every direction.
Running produced 25% of my QSOs, about where I usually max out. There's kind of
a brick wall there. A granite wall, actually.
Here the contest ends at 8 pm local time and last couple hours get really
frenetic with lots of Sunday afternoon contesters spicing things up. This year
was no exception with a real bang-up ending. 20m was jammed from stem to stern
and I had my best running hour from 2300z to 2359z. What a rush!
Thanks for the rollickin', frolickin' good time.
73,
Ken, AB1J
Flex 6500
N1MM+
20m attic dipole
20m outdoor 66' stealth wire, Dentron manual tuner and indoor counterpoise
LoTW eQSL ClubLog
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