I think 20 meters was terrible to Europe this weekend. Every score I
have seen from a club member has a low number on 20. There were some
pretty good DX stations workable on 20, but we got no real good opening
to Europe. The best openings appeared to be each morning just after
sunrise, but there was a lot of pressure to go to 15 and 10 there in
order to make hay while those bands were open. Then, when returning to
(or just monitoring) 20 meters, the signals from Europe were weak or
non-existent. During the morning run, there were stations running as
high as about 14105. So, if you stopped tuning when you hit the first
RTTY QRM, you missed a lot.
Many thanks to Bill, W4AN, for the use of his fabulous station. He
brought up Erik, the new arrival, for a visit Sunday afternoon, but he
was asleep at the time. I understand he likes to be awake and noisy at
night, hi.
Also, thanks to NQ4I for the use of a rig and cables for the second
station. Bill had an RF problem with the NE leg of the 80 meter vertical
system. It does not occur when he operates remote and I think he has
locallized the problem so it can be cured before the next DX contests.
He was also very kind to canniablize his matching system for his 10
meter stack so as to give me what I will need to feed voltage divide and
feed two antenna for the ten meter contest from Barbados next month. If
I had realized what he was going to do, I would have protested, but I
had been without sleep for some time and was too slow on the uptake to
prevent it from happening. No doubt he can get it back in place before
the DX contests in the Spring.
I bought a second MP from the estate of WB4JUN. Many of you may recall
John Cunningham, who owned RadioWholesale in Columbus and used to be a
big ham gear dealer. I bought two transceivers and an amp from him. He
passed away a few weeks ago and I have purchased his MP from his
estate. I will have to check to see what filters he had and order any
that are missing. I doubt he will have had any CW filters. So, next
time I won't have to impose on NQ4I for a second transceiver.
Bill's station worked flawlessly except for the one direction on the
four-square. Fortunately, he also has a dipole and I was able to work
almost every multiplier I heard in the NE direction. I just didn't try
running Europe as might have been possible with that working properly.
NQ4I says that he was able to run really well only during the early
hours the first night and it is unlikely that I would have tried running
on 80 that early in the contest when 40 was doing so well.
Here are the raw numbers. The final score will likely be almost
identical, since I don't know of any changes that will need to be made.
Band QSOs Zones Countries
160 22 9 6
80 101 16 52
40 877 29 105
20 275 32 99
15 745 32 110
10 679 26 102
ALL 1699 144 484 = 4,786,616. Guest op at W4AN. 45 hours.
All of this was done without even listening on the exclusive Extra class
segments, so a much higher score would have been possible with a really
good all round Extra class licensee at the helm.
Hope everyone had as much fun as I did.
I did make one concession to sanity this year. I did sleep a bit on the
second night. I have been doing this contest from the Caribbean most
year since 1987 without sleeping at all during the contest (and having
been up about 12 to 14 hours before the contest starts). But the rate
from the Caribbean never drops off to nothing. And, it does on the
second night from Georgia. I slept about 2 hours from 03 to 05Z Sunday
and again about 45 minutes later after Europe was substantially gone on
40 and before the band opened to Japan. In this case, sleeping was in a
sleeping bag on the floor of the shack. So, about 45 hours of
operating. Single op two radio. Haven't made an analysis of how many
second radio QSOs were made yet, but I am guessing it will be fewer than
during SS CW, since the rates were much higher for most of the time.
During a few hours on both afternoons after it was no longer possible to
run Europe on 15 and before it was possible to run JAs on 10 or 15, I
really used only the one radio almost strictly S&P. I would try CQing
every few minutes, but there were no answers. These were the hours that
I would have expected to run high rates into Europe on 20 meters, but
that wasn't possible this year.
I noticed upon my return home that the replacement rotator I had left at
the base of my tower is gone, so I am guessing that my home antenna will
rotate again as WA4QHN must have fixed it on Saturday. Either that, or
I may need to file a police report on the missing rotator.
73,
John, K4BAI.
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