CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW - 2020
Call: AC6DD
Operator(s): AC6DD
Station: AC6DD
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 598 State/Prov = 52 Countries = 38 Total Score = 202,050
Club:
Comments:
This was going to be the second time in the last 30 years that I operated from
home in the CQ160CW. The last time was in 1998, which produced a whopping score
of 52,606.
The other years I participated was all portable setups, piers, lighthouses
etc..
I had already planned to get back to the Lighthouse, but lots of unrelated
things to radio came up late in the week that I just could not make it.
It is also getting kind of old, as it takes quite an effort to set up and take
down and there just isn't any room for improvement in the station's
capabilities.
Back in November I set up an unguyed 75' tall vertical in my back yard, which is
made of a light duty steel crank-up tower. It is bottom loaded through a RF601
tuner.
The vertical setup is not complete yet, as the tuner is fixed on 1825. It is
also not guyed (yet), so a recent wind bent it to where it looks like it should
come crashing down. Hopefully I can take a picture of it before it does.
This setup gave me about 50 of kHz bandwith in the Contest (1800-1850). I also
put up a smaller version of the RX 4 square which I use at the Lighthouse to fit
in my back yard.
Well, it was obvious in the first few minutes of the contest that this location
is far noisier than the Lighthouse. Rural to Suburban makes a big difference.
To boot,the RX4S did not work correctly and I had to use the Vertical for
receive for most of the night. The Vertical antenna worked surprisingly well on
transmit, but the receive end did not match it.
This was a complete opposite of the Lighthouse where the receive end is far
superior.
I had more of the contest unrelated problems coming up during the evening which
I had to deal with and it was all just a big waste of time.
I managed to come back and continue, but the results were really poor. By the
end of the first night, I usually have north of 400 Q's - that is in a bad year.
I was barely over 200 this time.
The next evening I was able to recoup some of lost ground, with a decent amount
of European multipliers coming through.
The RX4S was fixed during the day (one bad coax), and it was actually working
pretty well now considering that three of the whips are close to a chain link
fence and the transmit vertical is in the middle.
I managed to squeeze out 598 Q's, 38 DXCC and 52 S&P. Missed CT, DC, ND,
SD, NE stateside. DU was a brand new one on 160 for me. No VK or ZL.
First time ever that I had more Q's on the second contest night.
K3, FTDX101MP (not in SO2R)
ACOM 2000A
75' tall bottom loaded vertical
RX4 Square with 98' on the side
73,
Niko AC6DD
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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