IARU HF World Championship
Call: WC1M
Operator(s): WC1M
Station: WC1M
Class: SOABCW HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 21
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Zones HQ Mults
-------------------------------------
160: 4 0 3 0
80: 42 0 11 13
40: 825 0 25 40
20: 935 0 29 38
15: 25 0 7 10
10: 0 0 0 0
-------------------------------------
Total: 1831 0 75 101 Total Score = 1,220,384
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Congrats to N4AF for a great score at the bottom of the cycle!
And big congrats to the German WRTC 2018 organizing committee! I don't know how
the logistics went this year, but in terms of the most important factor, getting
63 top teams on the air with everything except the radios, it appears to have
been a great success. My fellow WRTC 2014 directors and I have a deep
understanding what a monumental task it is, and the 5-year commitment that it
requires. Good show, DLs!
Although I expected to do a serious effort, my primary goal this year was to
feed my WRTC nostalgia and work each of the 63 teams in as short a time as
possible. As it was rare for more than one band to be open to Europe at a time
this year, I had to sacrifice some rate early on to ensure that I was able to
hunt everyone down. Overall score was secondary.
An interesting by-product was observing that some WRTC stations were noticeably
louder in the second hour of the contest, when I worked most of them. Their
signal levels appeared to even out later on. I do think a couple of stations
were consistently louder, and a couple of others were consistently weaker, but
my notes on that aren't detailed. It'll be interesting to see how the teams
scored and what the RBN reports show.
As others have pointed out, the WRTC competitors are great ops. When S&Ping
to find them, it was easy to pick them out well before they signed their calls.
Their CW speed was on the high side, and they were running at a
faster-than-average clip (and that's with low power and modest antennas.) You
could tell it was a Y8nx station just by professional-level efficiency of how
they operated. There were no exceptions. Maybe the group didn't include all the
best ops in the world, but to my ears they were all from that category.
Complicating matters for my score were weak conditions on 15 and heavy QRN from
thunderstorms on 80 (my Beverage didn't help -- I think something's wrong with
it.) I did OK with rate and mults on 40 and 20, but the lack of Qs and mults on
80 and 15 really hurt the score. The aforementioned problem with only one band
being open at a time significantly reduced SO2R productivity. Several times I
was effectively SO1R while tuning for mults and getting nothing on the run
radio.
On the whole, however, this was pretty average for my station in IARU. Although
the quiet geomagnetic field allowed plenty of over-the-pole propagation, and
hence stations coming in from all over the world on 40 and 20, it takes better
conditions to get closer to 2000 Qs and 2 million points from my location (and a
4-square on 80 probably would have helped!)
Life leading up to the contest was busy, but not so stressful that it affected
my performance. I did a bunch of tower-climbing over the past two weeks to put a
2m antenna on the top of the mast on my 110' tower for an iGate I'm hosting for
my club's APRS system. Good exercise, which I think helped my stamina in the
contest. Apparently the iGate performed flawlessly and was a key node for the
annual Prouty bike-ride to support cancer research.
Speaking of stamina, the only real break I took was late in the contest. I slept
for an hour and a half starting when the bands were producing nothing at about
0830z Sunday. SH5 says I actually took five hours off, but a lot of that was
short breaks ranging from 5-15 minutes. I had a few half-hour breaks to prepare
food and coffee, so I adjusted the claimed operating time accordingly. I have
cumulative non-breaks like that in every contest, a failure to keep my butt in
the chair.
I like this contest a lot -- 24 hours starting in our morning is pretty-much
ideal, and the zone/HQ mults make it really interesting. Short exchange, too.
That said, I'd love to see country mults in this contest, and getting credit for
each mult (i.e., double and triple mults!) Yeah, it would be more like CQWW, but
what's wrong with that? :-) For me, fun is more important than tradition.
I thought participation was very good, right up until the end. Alas, a handful
of EU ops plopped down on my frequency and called CQ at S9+, while refusing to
acknowledge my requests that they QSY. I know they heard me. In one instance, I
had been on frequency for several hours and my 10-minute rate meter was about
168/hour. I wasn't even interrupting my CQs to work the second radio. The
offending op ignored my complaints, and eventually I had to move. Frustrating.
What's happened to the courtesy of asking QRL? and waiting for an answer? To
those who think stealing a frequency is part of the game, I respectfully
disagree. It's rude.
Otherwise, hundreds of ops did a terrific job handing out Qs. Aside from a few
bad apples, we have a truly a great sporting community.
Oh, and a word to the wise -- don't depend exclusively on the HQ station lists
published before the contest. There were some mistakes. Listen carefully and log
what you hear, not what's on the sheet or pre-filled.
See you next time.
73, Dick WC1M
QSO/ZN+HQ by hour and band
Hour 160M CW 80M CW 40M CW 20M CW 15M CW Total Cumm
OffTime
D1-1200Z - - - 123/14 - 123/14 123/14
D1-1300Z - - - 37/10 - 37/10 160/24
D1-1400Z - - - 109/3 2/2 111/5 271/29
D1-1500Z - - - 151/3 1/1 152/4 423/33
D1-1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 121/3 --+-- 121/3 544/36
D1-1700Z - - - 29/2 6/6 35/8 579/44
D1-1800Z - - - 24/11 13/6 37/17 616/61
D1-1900Z - - - 66/0 2/1 68/1 684/62
D1-2000Z - - - 17/5 - 17/5 701/67
D1-2100Z - - 10/6 81/2 - 91/8 792/75
D1-2200Z - - 67/10 12/1 - 79/11 871/86
D1-2300Z - - 127/7 1/1 - 128/8 999/94
D2-0000Z --+-- --+-- 126/5 3/2 --+-- 129/7 1128/101
D2-0100Z - - 86/2 - - 86/2 1214/103
D2-0200Z - - 72/15 - - 72/15 1286/118
D2-0300Z - 24/22 69/3 - - 93/25 1379/143
D2-0400Z 1/1 - 52/4 6/6 - 59/11 1438/154
D2-0500Z 1/1 - 101/3 - - 102/4 1540/158
D2-0600Z 2/1 11/2 55/2 - - 68/5 1608/163
D2-0700Z - 7/0 39/5 - - 46/5 1654/168
D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- 17/1 --+-- --+-- 17/1 1671/169 47
D2-0900Z - - 3/1 5/0 - 8/1 1679/170 49
D2-1000Z - - 1/1 66/3 - 67/4 1746/174
D2-1100Z - - - 84/1 1/1 85/2 1831/176
Total: 4/3 42/24 825/65 935/67 25/17
Antennas:
160M - trapped vee @90'
80M - delta loop @75, trapped vee @90'
40M - Cal-Av 2D-40A @110', 4-square
20M - 4/4/4 SteppIRs @96'/64'/34' on TICs, C3E @50', 4-el @72'
15M - 4/4/4 SteppIRs @96'/64'/34' on TICs, C3E @50', 5-el @50'
10M - 4/4/4 SteppIRs @96'/64'/34' on TICs, C3E @50'. 6-el @115'
Tower#1: Force 12 EF-610, Cal-AV 2D-40A, 4-el SteppIRs, 160/80 trapped vee
770-MDP: Force-12 EF-420
AB-577 #1: Force-12 EF-515
AB-577 #2: Force-12 C3E
Delta loop hung from a tree
dual 580' beverage aimed 20/220 degrees
Equipment:
Elecraft K3/P3 + Alpha 87A, Elecraft K3/P3 + Acom 2000A + Afedri SDR-Net on
unused antenna for third band scope, Writelog, YCCC SO2R Box, homebrew Windows
antenna switching/tuning software ("AntennaMaster"), HDSDR, iPad
running Touchmon USB for touch-screen "button box", K1XM MOAS II USB
Switch, TopTen and KK1L SO2R switches, Green Heron and Hy-Gain rotor
controllers, microHam Stack Switch and StackMax
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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