To those with recent questions concerning this operation, I apologize for
the late posting. I am in the middle of relocating from Moscow to Budapest
and was on the road immediately following the contest weekend.
Here is my score and story/comment.
The score:
CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 1995
Call: AP2MY, Op. N9NC Country: Pakistan
Mode: CW Category: Single Operator
High Power
Unassisted
BAND QSO QSO PTS PTS/QSO ZONES COUNTRIES
160 0 0 0.00 0 0
80 0 0 0.00 0 0
40 2407 6287 2.61 33 100
20 0 0 0.00 0 0
15 0 0 0.00 0 0
10 0 0 0.00 0 0
---------------------------------------------------
Totals 2407 6287 2.61 33 100 => 836,171
Continent Statistics
AP2MY CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST Single Operator
160 80 40 20 15 10 ALL percent
North America 0 0 68 0 0 0 68 2.8
South America 0 0 7 0 0 0 7 0.3
Europe 0 0 1887 0 0 0 1887 76.7
Asia 0 0 478 0 0 0 478 19.4
Africa 0 0 10 0 0 0 10 0.4
Oceania 0 0 11 0 0 0 11 0.4
Comments:
After 10 years since serious participation (as an op at the N9MM/W9ZRX
multi-multi in the early 80's) in a contest, I had three main goals for this
effort:
1) Immerse myself in the contest and the 'other world' of the bands, in order
to totally forget about work and real life.
2) Make a solid attempt to turn in a respectable score.
3) Do this from a DX location, which I had not done before.
Through the process of planning, operating, and after contest analysis, I am
very happy with the results. It was tremendous fun to be a rare mult in the
CQ WW, and work was the last thing on my mind from the moment I arrived at
the airport.
Short aside: Failing to advertise and the late posting are unfortunately
symptoms of too much work. This is typical for Moscow. I ran into R3/W0YR
last summer (94) on 20M, one of his comments tells the story well "... I
discussed with my boss in the states a new concept, one weekend day off per
month...". Perhaps we're workaholics, but we've not talked or QSO'ed since
then. Anyway, the driving force behind this operation was to begin to correct
this situation. Next time I will do better at advertising and so on.
Background:
I got the idea of operating from Pakistan sometime in mid-October. I have
been working in Russia (based in Moscow) for 3 years and had dreamed of doing
some kind of DX operation. But work and/or family always took precedence. My
contract will conclude in December, so this CQ WW was the last chance. Now it
turns out I've signed up for 2 more years as an expat in Budapest. I work for
U S West in operations and engineering for cellular systems. I plan to be
active (more than I was in R3) as HA/N9NC or something similar. And hopefully
I'll do some more contest expeditions.
An engineer that works in our group in Moscow is from Pakistan. Between his
friends in Karachi and the ARRL, I was able to track down AP2MY, Mr. Yunus
Chaudhry, secretary of the Pakistan Amateur Radio Society (PARS). We had a
short phone discussion and a warm invitation was extended to me to operate
from his station in Islamabad. Note: The ARRL address for PARS is old. The
correct address is Pakistan Amateur Radio Society, P. O. Box 1450, Islamabad
44000 Pakistan.
On Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I received a visa to Pakistan with one day
service, again thanks to my co-worker Mr. Furqan, who had a friend at the
Pakistani Embassy in Moscow. Then Thanksgiving Day I left for Islamabad via
Istanbul and Karachi, on Turkish Airlines. This made for a long overnight
trip, about 15 hours with layovers-- something not to be repeated in the
future. Moscow-Karachi is only about 5 hours direct, but Aeroflot has flights
once a week and only on Saturday. (Its too bad Aeroflot doesn't have a
frequent flyer program; I have logged over 120 flights in the past 3 years.)
Mr, Chaudhry met me at the airport, now Friday morning local time. We had a
short breakfast and then drove to his home, and checked out the station. He
has a TS-930, IC-735, and an A4 with the 40M element, up about 65 feet. He had
borrowed an FL2000 for the contest. With minor glitches we fired up CT
version 9.13 on his 386, and checked out the rigs. The 930 had no internal cw
filter, so I decided to use the 735. It turned out to work quite well. After
1 cq on 20 cw, a large pile showed up. Later the same thing happened on 40.
Since he had no 80m ant, and 15 was questionable with the low solar flux, I
chose to operate 40m single band.
The contest:
The contest itself was fantastic. As all the reports here have mentioned, 40m
was just excellent. It was over full in the low end the first 4 hours of the
contest (until the band faded out with sunrise). I had 10min rates of just
at 200/hr, but managed just 100 to 120/hr average. The first real night
produced similar rates, with 7 straight 90 to 100/hr. During this time, I
looked at the clock once at 10pm local, next at 2:30 am, wondering where the
time had gone. Other highlights: Being called by 7 VU's total, 2 HS, 1 BY
(who actually started up CQing on my freq at 7004!... I let him keep it), also
4S7, 9M8, 9V, 2 VS6, 8Q7, VQ9, and about 60 W's. But I was having so much fun
I blew too many other mults, having seen the results. I didn't hear many
carribean stations when tuning, and had some trouble getting through to those
that I did hear the first night. Second night I set my mind to find more, and
did, but still ended up about 20 or 30 mults low vs. the other 40m scores.
Good experience for next time.
At first I thought the 735 and 400W amp would be a limiting factor, but now I
am certain that I was not hardware limited, all was determined by operating
ability. I think this is especially true for rare multipliers. You really
don't need a 3 ele yagi at 150 feet from a DX location. I just need to
practice managing the pile more efficiently, and searching for mults while
running.
Monday following the contest I slept during the day, and then left in the
evening for the torturous flight(s) back to Moscow. Part of this included a 6
hour lay over in Karachi until 4am. With the change in jobs upcoming, I was
unable to stay for extra time in Islamabad.
That's probably enough bandwidth. My special thanks to Mr. Chaudhry, who knew
exactly what a contester wants-- plenty of food and no interuptions while
operating. His hospitality was exceptional.
73,
Tom (R3)/N9NC
P.S. QSL Information
I erred in not realizing how much in demand AP might be on 40 CW. That coupled
with the very short decision time before the operation resulted in my
resorting to "QSL via BURO" to requests during the contest. I will QSL all of
the QSO's via the bureau, but if somebody wants a card faster, you may QSL via
my N9NC home address which is:
Thomas Poland N9NC
1220 Abington Pike
Richmond, IN 47374
Bureau QSL's should be sent via the AP bureau, so that Mr. Chaudhry will
receive these cards directly.
>From Danny Eskenazi <k7ss@wolfenet.com> Sun Dec 31 17:04:21 1995
From: Danny Eskenazi <k7ss@wolfenet.com> (Danny Eskenazi)
Subject: Happy New CONTEST Year
Message-ID: <199512311704.JAA04264@wolfe.net>
Just looked at the clock and its 1996
in TOKYO!!!
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL ! ! !
Hope 1996 is full of new records and bursting
contest logs for everyone
73 de Danny K7SS
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