I have seen the light. I have found religion. My life will never be the same.
What's this, you ask ? Has KR0Y flipped out and [finally] decided to give up
ham radio contesting ? No, not yet. But words escape me when I attempt to
describe operating the ARRL DX CW test last weekend. You see, I was at the
K1AR (K1EA QTH) Multi-Two.
During my 14 year contest career, I have had the pleasure of operating from
Missouri and Texas, with an occassional side trip to V3, VP5, P4 and
Pennsylvania. But I have NEVER before experienced the absolute feeling of
domination in a contest like I did this weekend.
To be sure, K1EA has a FB station with excellent antennas. If you could
somehow rank USA stations by size of antenna systems, I'm sure K1EA would be
in the top 50-100. Ken is no slouch of an operator, either. He has won the WW
ya' know, in between writing code for CT and stuff. K1AR needs no accolades
from me or anyone else. But what the hell, we all know John is THE operator.
It was a great experience operating with these two and I had a blast.
A very good station and operators. But I said TOTAL DOMINATION before, didn't
I ?? So what have I left out. Hmmmm, let's see... Oh yes, location ! And I
don't mean the hill that Ken's QTH is on, either !
Sure, conditions this year were down. But down EQUALLY across geographic
areas ? No, not even remotely.
I've never seen it so easy to find hold a frequency. Not even challenged by
wanna-be's who don't care if anyone calls, they just wanna nudge up to a big
boy on the band edge and play. Big rate all the time, you ask ? No, not
really. Figure our best hour was maybe 135. But you sure do hear EU well for
A LOT of hours. And where did all these QRP guys come from in Europe, anyway
? I've never heard them before. Weird working that YB and HS during the
Sunday morning EU run on 15 meters. I was really disappointed that 80 was so
poor. I mean, only 300 QSOs ? What a bummer. How could we miss a JA on 15 too
? And losing one station for 45 minutes Friday night right at EU sunrise.
Ouch, that sure hurt ........
In 1992 I had about 4 M single-op from WM5G. The K1AR multi-two score that
year had about 8.3 M. Two years later the 'AR score is down about 25%. I can
only speculate, but figure the best I could have done from WM5G this year
would have been 2 M. A reduction of 50%.
Does it sound like I'm bitching ? It's not my intention. I simply had no idea
what it was like, operating a DX contest from W1. I won't get caught up in
the argument about what constitutes an "East coast QTH" (I don't think Dallas
is). I'm sure the 2s and 3s think it's W1. And those guys in Maine sure have
an edge over Connecticut, etc. I have no doubt that there are SUBTLE
differences.
While one contest from W1 isn't a statistically significant sample size for a
quantitative analysis, I can safely say one thing: DO YOU GUYS ON THE EAST
COAST KNOW HOW GOOD YOU HAVE IT ?!
73
Jeff Steinman KR0Y
jsteinman@aol.com
|