CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW - 2019
Call: VE2IM
Operator(s): VE3DZ UT3UA
Station: VE2IM
Class: Multi-Op HP
QTH: FO60te
Operating Time (hrs): 29
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 718 State/Prov = 52 Countries = 53 Total Score = 415,695
Club: Contest Club Ontario
Comments:
A visit of my schoolmate and WRTC-2002 partner Sergey UT3UA to Montreal
coincided with CQ160 Contest and since his dream was one day to go to Zone 2 to
operate, I offered him a trip up North. I knew it was crazy decision, but what
the heck - we only live once!
I left my home in Niagara late morning on Monday, January 20th and after about 7
hours ride I picked Sergey in Montreal and we spent the rest of the evening in
the company of Anton, a son of our common friend Alex VE2XAA who is now a Silent
Key.
When we left Montreal the following morning, it was -21 C! The highways were
better than I expected, mostly cleaned from the snow and not icy up until the
town of Baie-Cameau. The last 250 kilometers were pretty tough, with snow
blizzards. And probably because we had to drive in the dark :-) .
When we arrived in Sept-Iles after about 11 hours ride, the outside temperature
was only minus 15 C, warmer than in the morning.
The weather treated us pretty well in the next 2 days and we were able to dig
the end of EU beverage out of 4 feet high snowbank, re-adjust Inverted L, tune
80 m dipole to CW band and put up a JA beverage. For the latter we had to borrow
snow shoes (TNX to VA2FGG) because it would be virtually impossible to walk in
the woods where snow level reached 5 feet. We managed to roll about 200 m of
wire towards the cemetery and 2 inch of the galvanized steel pipe of the
cemetery fence sticking out of the snow served a perfect ground for our
beverage.
Conditions were marginal at best, but we managed to work a lot of EU no both 160
and 80, but up to this day we yet have to work our first JA on Topband! Only 1
JA worked on 80 so far.
Friday brought us more snow, but we still managed to put up and Inverted L for
60 meters in order to satisfy numerous requests for Zone 2 on this new (for me
too!) bad.
Unfortunately, conditions didn't favour us and worsened by Friday night. When I
barely managed 70 q's in the first hour of the Contest, I understood that our
goal of 1000 QSO would be really difficult to reach.
On the first night we heard very few Europeans, and managed to work only
probably a one third of them... Second night was a bit better and we could
improve our DXCC total from 28 to 53, but we still missed a lot of pretty easy
mults. Even stations in the mainland U.S.A. was pretty hard to work. I remember
calling N9RV, N4OGW, VE6BBP many many times, but couldn't work them.
I hope our Zone 2 neighbours to the East (VO2AC) did much better.
Anyway, judging from Sergey's excitement and his non-stop operating for 14-16
hours I can tell that he is having a lot of fun and our trip is a success (still
need to get home in one piece though!). We will continue our effort to work JA's
in the remaining 2 days. It's snow blizzard now and the temperature dropped to
minus 20 C again, and I know we would need to dig out our car from under the
snow on Tuesday, but it's still fun!
We want to dedicate our operation to our late friend Alex VE2XAA who was pretty
frequent traveler to Zone 2 (our first joint trip was in 1999).
Thanks to all for the QSO's and we are happy if we were able to give you a new
Zone on the needed band.
73, Yuri VE2IM (VE3DZ) and Sergey UT3UA
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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