Decided to be a bit more serious this year. Score was best yet, but could have
done better! Spent too much time chasing mults, old habits die hard I guess,
instead of chasing QTC's. Only a few stations offered to sent qtc's to me and I
ended up sending over twice as many as I received. A few stations declined my
offer of sending them qtc's, like the LU who said copy was very poor, then I
suggested he turn his beam to ZL, which he did and then reported that my signal
was now 10 over 9 !
As expected 40m was the best band for qso's but not for qtc's, with good runs to
Eu, NA and JA. 15m after sunset was good both evenings to Eu but the rest of
time it was slim pickings on that band and 20m.
I'm starting to seriously believe that maybe there are just not enough stations
active in this contest for it to warrant being a 36/48 hour show and maybe 24
hours would be long enough. Okay I realise that according to the 2004 results
2532 stations were in 636 logs, but it would also appear from the results, that
70% of them are running low power, which on RTTY probably means 25-50 watts,
that together with the fact that a good percentage will be using simple wire or
trap vertical antennas on the high bands means that they don't work many non-Eu
stations, especially when propagation is poor. So whilst 36/48 hours might suit
Eu's, it probably doesn't make a lot sense to non-Eu stations, unless your
callsign starts with 7X, H2, ZC or CT3.
Call: ZL4BR
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: New Plymouth
Operating Time (hrs): 32
Summary:
Band QSOs Pts QTCs Mults
-------------------------------
80: 2 2 8
40: 208 268 60 189
20: 144 314 170 106
15: 170 470 300 98
10: 1 1 2
-------------------------------
Total: 525 1055 530 403 Total Score = 425,165
Station:
TS-2000 & AL-80B, running around 600w
3-el tribander at 10m
40m GP at 6m
73, Frank ZL4BR
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