Extracted from 3830 posting: full report at
http://lists.contesting.com/archives/html/3830/2009-01/msg02222.html
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Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me!
(http://www.k8nd.com/Radio/Planning/CQWW160/Clown_3588.jpg)
This was the second time Jim W8WTS and Jeff K8ND have operated the CQWW 160 CW
Contest
from the PJ2T station, having had to miss last year due to the demands of our
mutual
employer. K8ND was single-op at the station in 2006.
This year, we had two significant new technological resources to test: 1) an
Elecraft K3,
and 2) CW Skimmer, using RF Space SDR-IQ.
The good Topband conditions in the North were not good to us at 12 degrees
above the
Equator. With the North American stations and the Europeans in a feeding
frenzy, they
didn't listen down our way. Our usually-loud signal was lost among the European
and USA
stations CQing at and among each other. Our pileups were not as deep as usual,
and were
often encroached by others seeking a CQ frequency of their own, making it
difficult for
the "second tier" stations to hear us. The result for us was just a few more
QSOs and a
few more multipliers than we made in 2007, with only a slightly higher claimed
score.
We had only two hours with rates over 100, two with rates over 90, and three
with rates
over 80.
We have never worked so many JA stations on Topband from the PJ2T station! A
total of 76
Japanese stations were logged, mostly on the first night, between 0800Z and our
sunrise
around 1100Z. This is more stations worked for any single country besides the
USA (1011),
even more than Canada (63)! We attribute this to very low Auroral activity
during that
first night, so our usual aurora-skimming signal path was clear to Japan. Our
breakdown by
continent is shown below:
160 Total %
NA 1112 1112 71.7
SA 19 19 1.2
EU 320 320 20.6
AF 5 5 0.3
AS 90 90 5.8
OC 5 5 0.3
Station Equipment:
Transciever: Elecraft K3
Amplifier: Cary LK-800 (2 x 3CPX800A7)
TX Antenna: Inverted-L over ~60 radials (~60' vertical, sloping up to ~90') RX
Antennas:
1000-foot Beverage - Europe
650-foot Beverage - USA/JA
DX Engineering RX 4-Square
Flag - Northern Europe
Flag - VK/ZL
RX Antenna Switching: K9AY RAS-8x2
Contest Software: Writelog v10.69D
CW Skimmer: RF Space SDR-IQ receiver
CW Skimmer v1.4 Software
**********************************
73,
Jeff Maass K8ND
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